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A  DAUGHTER  OF  THE 
MIDDLE  BORDER 


BY 

HAMLIN  GARLAND 

Member  of  The  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters 


gorfe 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1921 

All  rights  reserved 


PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES    OF   AMERICA 


COPYRIGHT,  1921, 
BY  HAMLIN  GARLAND. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1921. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


1 3$ 


To  my  wife  Zulime  Taft,  who  for  more  than 
twenty  years  has  shared  my  toil  and  borne 
with  my  shortcomings,  I  dedicate  this  story 
of  a  household  on  the  vanishing  Middle 
Border,  with  an  ever-deepening  sense  of  her 
fortitude  and  serenity. 


r  o  ,w  i> 


Acknowledgments  are  made  to  Florence 
Huber  Schott,  Edward  Foley  and  Arthur 
Dudley  for  the  use  of  the  photographs  which 
illustrate  this  volume. 


FOREWORD 

— I- 

To  My  New  Readers 

IN  the  summer  of  1893,  after  nine  years  of  hard  but 
happy  literary  life  in  Boston  and  New  York,  I  decided 
to  surrender  my  residence  in  the  East  and  reestablish  my 
home  in  the  West,  a  decision  which  seemed  to  be — as  it  was 
— a  most  important  event  in  my  career. 

This  change  of  headquarters  was  due  not  to  a  diminish 
ing  love  for  New  England,  but  to  a  deepening  desire  to  be 
near  my  aging  parents,  whom  I  had  persuaded,  after  much 
argument,  to  join  in  the  purchase  of  a  family  homestead, 
in  West  Salem,  Wisconsin,  the  little  village  from  which  we 
had  all  adventured  some  thirty  years  before. 

My  father,  a  typical  pioneer,  who  had  grown  gray  in 
opening  new  farms,  one  after  another  on  the  wind-swept 
prairies  of  Iowa  and  Dakota,  was  not  entirely  content  with 
my  plan  but  my  mother,  enfeebled  by  the  hardships  of  a 
farmer's  life,  and  grateful  for  my  care,  was  glad  of  the 
arrangement  I  had  brought  about.  In  truth,  she  realized 
that  her  days  of  pioneering  were  over  and  the  thought  of 
ending  her  days  among  her  friends  and  relatives  was  a  com 
fort  to  her.  That  I  had  rescued  her  from  a  premature  grave 
on  the  barren  Dakota  plain  was  certain,  and  the  hope  of 
being  able  to  provide  for  her  comfort  was  the  strongest 
element  in  my  plan. 

After  ten  years  of  separation  we  were  agreed  upon  a 

ix 


Foreword 

project  which  would  enable  us  as  a  family  to  spend  our 
summers  together;  for  my  brother,  Franklin,  an  actor  in 
New  York  City,  had  promised  to  take  his  vacation  in  the 
home  which  we  had  purchased. 

As  this  homestead  (which  was  only  eight  hours  by  rail 
from  Chicago)  is  to  be  one  of  the  chief  characters  in  this 
story,  I  shall  begin  by  describing  it  minutely.  It  was 
not  the  building  in  which  my  life  began — I  should  like 
to  say  it  was,  but  it  was  not.  My  birthplace  was  a 
cabin — part  logs  and  part  lumber — on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  town.  Originally  a  squatter's  cabin,  it  was  now 
empty  and  forlorn,  a  dreary  monument  of  the  pioneer  days, 
which  I  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  enter.  The  house  which 
I  had  selected  for  the  final  Garland  homestead,  was  en 
tirely  without  any  direct  associations  with  my  family.  It 
was  only  an  old  frame  cottage,  such  as  a  rural  carpenter 
might  build  when  left  to  his  own  devices,  rude,  angular, 
ugly  of  line  and  drab  in  coloring,  but  it  stood  in  the  midst 
of  a  four-acre  field,  just  on  the  edge  of  the  farmland. 
Sheltered  by  noble  elms  and  stately  maples,  its  windows 
fronted  on  a  low  range  of  wooded  hills,  whose  skyline 
(deeply  woven  into  my  childish  memories)  had  for  me  the 
charm  of  things  remembered,  and  for  my  mother  a  placid 
beauty  which  (after  her  long  stay  on  the  treeless  levels  of 
Dakota)  was  almost  miraculous  in  effect.  Entirely  with 
out  architectural  dignity,  our  new  home  was  spacious  and 
suggested  the  comfort  of  the  region  round  about. 

My  father,  a  man  of  sixty-five,  though  still  actively  con 
cerned  with  a  wide1  wheat  farm  in  South  Dakota,  had  agreed 
to  aid  me  in  maintaining  this  common  dwelling  place  in 
Wisconsin  provided  he  could  return  to  Dakota  during  seed 
ing  and  again  at  harvest.  He  was  an  eagle-eyed,  tireless 
man  of  sixty-five  years  of  age,  New  England  by  origin,  tall, 
alert,  quick-spoken  and  resolute,  the  kind  of  natural  pio- 

x 


Foreword 

neer  who  prides  himself  on  never  taking  the  back  trail. 
In  truth  he  had  yielded  most  reluctantly  to  my  plan,  in 
fluenced  almost  wholly  by  the  failing  health  of  my  mother, 
to  whom  the  work  of  a  farm  household  had  become  an  in 
tolerable  burden.  As  I  had  gained  possession  of  the  prem 
ises  early  in  November  we  were  able  to  eat  our  Thanks 
giving  Dinner  in  our  new  home,  happy  in  the  companion 
ship  of  old  friends  and  neighbors.  My  mother  and  my 
Aunt  Susan  were  entirely  content.  The  Garlands  seemed 
anchored  at  last. 


—II— 

To  the  Readers  of 
"A  Son  of  the  Middle  Border" 

N  taking  up  and  carrying  forward  the  theme  of  "A  Son   / 
of  the  Middle  Border"  I  am  fully  aware  of  my  task's 
increasing  difficulties,  realizing  that  I  must  count  on  the 
clear  understanding  and  continuing  good  will  of  my  readers. 

First  of  all,  you  must  grant  that  the  glamor  of  child 
hood,  the  glories  of  the  Civil  War,  the  period  of  prairie 
conquest  which  were  the  chief  claims  to  interest  in  the 
first  volume  of  my  chronicle  can  not  be  restated  in  these 
pages.  The  action  of  this  book  moves  forward  into  the 
light  of  manhood,  into  the  region  of  middle  age.  Further 
more,  its  theme  is  more  personal.  Its  scenes  are  less 
epic.  It  is  a  study  of  individuals  and  their  relationships 
rather  than  of  settlements  and  migrations.  In  short,  "A 
Daughter  of  the  Middle  Border"  is  the  complement  of  "A 
Son  of  the  Middle  Border,"  a  continuation,  not  a  repetition, 
in  which  I  attempt  to  answer  the  many  questions  which 
readers  of  the  first  volume  have  persistently  put  to  me. 


Foreword 

"Did  your  mother  get  her  new  daughter? "  "How  long 
did  she  live  to  enjoy  the  peace  of  her  Homestead?"  "What 
became  of  David  and  Burton?"  "Did  your  father  live  to 
see  his  grandchildren?"  These  and  many  other  queries, 
literary  as  well  as  personal,  are — I  trust — satisfactorily 
answered  in  this  book.  Like  the  sequel  to  a  novel,  it  at 
tempts  to  account  for  its  leading  characters  and  to  satisfy 
the  persistent  interest  which  my  correspondents  have  so 
cordially  expressed. 

It  remains  to  say  that  the  tale  is  as  true  as  my  memory 
will  permit— it  is  constructed  only  by  leaving  things  out. 
If  it  reads,  as  some  say,  like  fiction,  that  result  is  due  not 
to  invention  but  to  the  actual  lives  of  the  characters  in 
volved.  Finally  this  closes  my  story  of  the  Garlands  and 
McClintocks  and  the  part  they  took  in  a  marvelous  era  in 
American  settlement. 


xii 


CONTENTS 

BOOK  I 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  MY  FIRST  WINTER  IN  CHICAGO i 

II.  I  RETURN  TO  THE  SADDLE 13 

III.  IN  THE  FOOTSTEPS  OF  GENERAL  GRANT 24 

IV.  RED  MEN  AND  BUFFALO 38 

V.  THE  TELEGRAPH  TRAIL 53 

VI.  THE  RETURN  OF  THE  ARTIST 70 

VII.  LONDON  AND  EVENING  DRESS 86 

VIII.  THE  CHOICE  OF  THE  NEW  DAUGHTER 97 

IX.  A  JUDICIAL  WEDDING 122 

X.  THE  NEW  DAUGHTER  AND  THANKSGIVING.  . .  140 

XI.  MY  FATHER'S  INHERITANCE 153 

XII.  WE  TOUR  THE  OKLAHOMA  PRAIRIE 171 

XIII.  STANDING  ROCK  AND  LAKE  MCDONALD 184 

XIV.  THE  EMPTY  ROOM 204 

BOOK  II 

XV.  A  SUMMER  IN  THE  HIGH  COUNTRY 219 

XVI.  THE  WHITE  HOUSE  MUSICAL 237 

XVII.  SIGNS  OF  CHANGE 247 

xiii 


Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVIII.  THE  OLD  PIONEER  TAKES  THE  BACK  TRAIL.  .  262 

XIX.  NEW  LIFE  IN  THE  OLD  HOUSE 271 

XX.  MARY  ISABEL'S  CHIMNEY 289 

XXI.  THE  FAIRY  WORLD  OF  CHILDHOOD 307 

XXII.  THE  OLD  SOLDIER  GAINS  A  GRANDDAUGHTER  326 

XXIII.  "CAVANAGH"  AND  THE  "WINDS  OF  DESTINY"  341 

XXIV.  THE  OLD  HOMESTEAD  SUFFERS  DISASTER.  ...  355 
XXV.  DARKNESS  JUST  BEFORE  THE  DAWN 369 

XXVI.  A  SPRAY  OF  WILD  ROSES 381 

XXVII.  A  SOLDIER  OF  THE  UNION  MUSTERED  OUT.  . . .  389 
AFTERWORD 400 


xiv 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Isabel  Clintock  Garland,  A  Daughter  of  the  Middle 

Border    f 

•s  Frontispiece 
Zulime  Taft:    The  New  Daughter [ 

FACING   PAGE 

Miss   Zulime   Taft,   acting  as   volunteer   housekeeper 

for  the  colony 104 

At  last  the  time  came  when  I  was  permitted  to  take  my 

wife — lovely  as  a  Madonna — out  into  the  sunshine  287 

The  old  soldier  loved  to  take  the  children  on  his  knees 
and  bask  in  the  light  of  the  fire 304 

Entirely  subject  to  my  daughter,  who  regarded  me  as  a 
wonderful  giant,  I  paid  tribute  to  her  in  song 
and  story 322 

That  night  as  my  daughters  "dressed  up"  as  princesses, 
danced  in  the  light  of  our  restored  hearth,  I  forgot 
all  the  disheartenment  which  the  burning  of  the 
house  had  brought  upon  me 368 

The  art  career  which  Zulime  Taft  abandoned  after  our 
marriage,  is  now  being  taken  up  by  her  daughter 
Constance  400 

To  Mary  Isabel  who  as  a  girl  of  eighteen  still  loves 

to  impersonate  the  majesty  of  princesses 402 


xv 


A  Daughter  of  the   Middle 
Border 

BOOK  I 
CHAPTER  ONE 

My    First    Winter     in     Chicago 

WELL,  Mother,"  I  said  as  I  took  my  seat  at  the  break 
fast  table  the  second  day  after  our  Thanksgiving 
dinner,  "I  must  return  to  Chicago.  I  have  some  lectures 
to  deliver  and  besides  I  must  get  back  to  my  writing." 

She  made  no  objection  to  my  announcement  but  her 
eyes  lost  something  of  their  happy  light.  "When  will  you 
come  again?"  she  asked  after  a  pause. 

"Almost  any  minute,"  I  replied  assuringly.  "You  must 
remember  that  I'm  only  a  few  hours  away  now.  I  can 
visit  you  often.  I  shall  certainly  come  up  for  Christmas. 
If  you  need  me  at  any  time  send  me  word  in  the  afternoon 
and  I'll  be  with  you  at  breakfast." 

That  night  at  six  o'clock  I  was  in  my  city  home,  a 
lodging  quite  as  humble  in  character  as  my  fortunes. 

In  a  large  chamber  on  the  north  side  of  a  house  on  Elm 
Street  and  only  three  doors  from  Lake  Michigan,  I  had 
assembled  my  meager  library  and  a  few  pitiful  mementoes 
of  my  life  in  Boston.  My  desk  stood  near  a  narrow  side 
window  and  as  I  mused  I  could  look  out  upon  the  shore 
less  expanse  of  blue-green  water  fading  mistily  into  the 
north-east  sky,  and,  at  night,  when  the  wind  was  in  the 

i 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

East  the  crushing  thunder  of  the  breakers  along  the  con 
crete  wall  formed  a  noble  accompaniment  to  my  writing, 
filling  me  with  vaguely  ambitious  literary  plans.  Exalted 
by  the  sound  of  this  mighty  orchestra  I  felt  entirely  con 
tent  with  the  present  and  serenely  confident  of  the  future. 

"This  is  where  I  belong,"  I  said.  "Here  in  the  great 
Midland  metropolis  with  this  room  for  my  pivot,  I  shall 
continue  my  study  of  the  plains  and  the  mountains." 

I  had  burned  no  bridges  between  me  and  the  Island  of 
Manhattan,  however!  Realizing  all  too  well  that  I  must 
still  look  to  the  East  for  most  of  my  income,  I  carefully 
retained  my  connections  with  Harper's,  the  Century  and 
other  periodicals.  Chicago,  rich  and  powerful  as  it  had 
become,  could  not  establish — or  had  not  established — a 
paying  magazine,  and  its  publishing  firms  were  mostly 
experimental  and  not  very  successful;  although  the  Colum 
bian  Exposition  which  was  just  closing,  had  left  upon 
the  city's  clubs  and  societies  (and  especially  on  its  young 
men)  an  esthetic  stimulation  which  bade  fair  to  carry  on 
to  other  and  more  enduring  enterprises. 

Nevertheless  in  the  belief  that  it  was  to  become  the 
second  great  literary  center  of  America  I  was  resolved  to 
throw  myself  into  the  task  of  hurrying  it  forward  on  the 
road  to  new  and  more  resplendent  achievement. 

My  first  formal  introduction  to  the  literary  and  artistic 
circle  in  which  I  was  destined  to  work  and  war  for  many 
years,  took  place  through  the  medium  of  an  address  on 
Impressionism  in  Art  which  I  delivered  in  the  library  of 
Franklin  Head,  a  banker  whose  home  had  become  one 
of  the  best-known  intellectual  meeting  places  on  the  North 
Side.  This  lecture,  considered  very  radical  at  the  time, 
was  the  direct  outcome  of  several  years  of  study  and 
battle  in  Boston  in  support  of  the  open-air  school  of  paint 
ing,  a  school  which  was  astonishing  the  West  with  its 
defiant  play  of  reds  and  yellows,  and  the  flame  of  its  pur- 


My    First    Winter    in    Chicago 

pie  shadows.  As  a  missionary  in  the  interest  of  the  New 
Art,  I  rejoiced  in  this  opportunity  to  advance  its  inspiring 
heresies. 

While  uttering  my  shocking  doctrines  (entrenched  be 
hind  a  broad,  book-laden  desk),  my  eyes  were  attracted 
to  the  face  of  a  slender  black-bearded  young  man  whose 
shining  eyes  and  occasional  smiling  nod  indicated  a  joyous 
agreement  with  the  main  points  of  my  harangue.  I  had 
never  seen  him  before,  but  I  at  once  recognized  in  him  a 
fellow  conspirator  against  "The  Old  Hat"  forces  of  con 
servatism  in  painting. 

At  the  close  of  my  lecture  he  drew  near  and  putting 
out  his  hand,  said,  "My  name  is  Taft — Lorado  Taft.  I 
am  a  sculptor,  but  now  and  again  I  talk  on  painting. 
Impressionism  is  all  very  new  here  in  the  West,  but  like 
yourself  I  am  an  advocate  of  it,  I  am  doing  my  best  to 
popularize  a  knowledge  of  it,  and  I  hope  you  will  call 
upon  me  at  my  studio  some  afternoon — any  afternoon  and 
discuss  these  isms  with  me." 

Young  Lorado  Taft  interested  me,  and  I  instantly  ac 
cepted  his  invitation  to  call,  and  in  this  way  (notwith 
standing  a  wide  difference  in  training  and  temperament), 
a  friendship  was  established  which  has  never  been  strained 
even  in  the  fiercest  of  our  esthetic  controversies.  Many 
others  of  the  men  and  women  I  met  that  night  became  my 
co-workers  in  the  building  of  the  "greater  Chicago,"  which 
was  even  then  coming  into  being — the  menace  of  the 
hyphenate  American  had  no  place  in  our  thoughts. 

In  less  than  a  month  I  fell  into  a  routine  as  regular,  as 
peaceful,  as  that  in  which  I  had  moved  in  Boston.  Each 
morning  in  my  quiet  sunny  room  I  wrote,  with  complete 
absorption,  from  seven  o'clock  until  noon,  confidently  com 
posing  poems,  stories,  essays,  and  dramas.  I  worked  like 
a  painter  with  several  themes  in  hand  passing  from 
one  to  the  other  as  I  felt  inclined.  After  luncheon  I 

3 


A    Daughter   of    the   Middle    Border 

walked  down  town  seeking  exercise  and  recreation.  It  soon 
became  my  habit  to  spend  an  hour  or  two  in  Taft's  studio 
(I  fear  to  his  serious  detriment),  and  in  this  way  I  soon 
came  to  know  most  of  the  "Bunnies"  of  "the  Rabbit- War 
ren"  as  Henry  B.  Fuller  characterized  this  studio  building 
— and  it  well  deserved  the  name!  Art  was  young  and 
timid  in  Cook  County. 

Among  the  women  of  this  group  Bessie  Potter,  who  did 
lovely  statuettes  of  girls  and  children,  was  a  notable  figure. 
Edward  Kemeys,  Oliver  Dennett  Grover,  Charles  Francis 
Browne,  and  Hermon  MacNeill,  all  young  artists  of  high 
endowment,  and  marked  personal  charm  became  my  val 
ued  associates  and  friends.  We  were  all  equally  poor  and 
equally  confident  of  the  future.  Our  doubts  were  few  and 
transitory  as  cloud  shadows,  our  hopes  had  the  wings  of 
eagles. 

As  Chicago  possessed  few  clubs  of  any  kind  and  had  no 
common  place  of  meeting  for  those  who  cultivated  the  fine 
arts,  Taft's  studio  became,  naturally,  our  center  of  esthetic 
exchange.  Painting  and  sculpture  were  not  greatly  en 
couraged  anywhere  in  the  West,  but  Lorado  and  his  brave 
colleagues,  hardy  frontiersmen  of  art,  laughed  in  the  face 
of  all  discouragement. 

A  group  of  us  often  lunched  in  what  Taft  called  "the 
Beanery" — a  noisy,  sloppy  little  restaurant  on  Van  Buren 
Street,  where  our  lofty  discussions  of  Grecian  sculpture 
were  punctuated  by  the  crash  of  waiter-proof  crockery,  or 
smothered  with  the  howl  of  slid  chairs.  However,  no  one 
greatly  minded  these  barbarities.  They  were  all  a  part  of 
the  game.  If  any  of  us  felt  particularly  flush  we  dined,  at 
sixty  cents  each,  in  the  basement  of  a  big  department  store 
a  few  doors  further  west;  and  when  now  and  then  some 
good  "lay  brother"  like  Melville  Stone,  or  Franklin  Head, 
invited  us  to  a  "royal  gorge"  at  Kinsley's  or  to  a  princely 

4 


My    First    Winter    in    Chicago 

luncheon  in  the  tower  room  of  the  Union  League,  we  went 
like  minstrels  to  the  baron's  hall.  None  of  us  possessed 
evening  suits  and  some  of  us  went  so  far  as  to  denounce 
swallowtail  coats  as  "undemocratic."  I  was  one  of  these. 

This  "artistic  gang"  also  contained  several  writers  who 
kept  a  little  apart  from  the  journalistic  circle  of  which 
Eugene  Field  and  Opie  Read  were  the  leaders,  and  though 
I  passed  freely  from  one  of  these  groups  to  the  other  I 
acknowledged  myself  more  at  ease  with  Henry  Fuller  and 
Taft  and  Browne,  and  a  little  later  I  united  with  them  in 
organizing  a  society  to  fill  our  need  of  a  common  meeting 
place.  This  association  we  called  The  Little  Room,  a  name 
suggested  by  Madelaine  Yale  Wynne's  story  of  an  inter 
mittently  vanishing  chamber  in  an  old  New  England  home 
stead. 

For  a  year  or  two  we  met  in  Bessie  Potter's  studio,  and 
on  the  theory  that  our  club,  visible  and  hospitable  on 
Friday  afternoon,  was  non-existent  during  all  the  other 
days  of  the  week,  we  called  it  "the  Little  Room."  Later 
still  we  shifted  to  Ralph  Clarkson's  studio  in  the  Fine  Arts 
Building — where  it  still  flourishes. 

The  fact  is,  I  was  a  poor  club  man.  I  did  not  smoke, 
and  never  used  rum  except  as  a  hair  tonic — and  beer  and 
tobacco  were  rather  distasteful  to  me.  I  do  not  boast  of 
this  singularity,  I  merely  state  it.  No  doubt  I  was  con 
sidered  a  dull  and  profitless  companion  even  in  "the  Little 
Room,"  but  in  most  of  my  sobrieties  Taft  and  Browne 
upheld  me,  though  they  both  possessed  the  redeeming  vir 
tue  of  being  amusing,  which  I,  most  certainly,  never 
achieved. 

Taft  was  especially  witty  in  his  sly,  sidewise  comment, 
and  often  when  several  of  us  were  in  hot  debate,  his  sen 
tentious  or  humorous  retorts  cut  or  stung  in  defence  of 
some  esthetic  principle  much  more  effectively  than  most 

5 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

of  my  harangues.  Sculpture,  with  him,  was  a  religious 
faith,  and  he  defended  it  manfully  and  practiced  it  with 
skill  and  an  industry  which  was  astounding. 

Though  a  noble  figure  and  universally  admired,  he  had, 
like  myself,  two  very  serious  defects,  he  was  addicted  to 
frock  coats  and  the  habit  of  lecturing!  Although  he  did 
not  go  so  far  as  to  wear  a  plaid  Windsor  tie  with  his 
"Prince  Albert"  coat  (as  I  have  been  accused  of  doing), 
he  displayed  something  of  the  professor's  zeal  in  his  plat 
form  addresses.  I  would  demur  against  the  plaid  Windsor 
tie  indictment  if  I  dared  to  do  so,  but  a  certain  snapshot 
portrait  taken  by  a  South-side  photographer  of  that  day 
(and  still  extant)  forces  me  to  painful  confession— I  had 
such  a  tie,  and  I  wore  it  with  a  frock  coat.  My  social 
status  is  thus  clearly  defined. 

Taft's  studio,  which  was  on  the  top  floor  of  the  Athe 
naeum*  Building  on  Van  Buren  Street,  had  a  section  which 
he  called  "the  morgue,"  for  the  reason  that  it  was  littered 
with  piaster  duplicates  of  busts,  arms,  and  hands.  This 
room,  fitted  up  with  shelf-like  bunks,  was  filled  nearly 
every  night  with  penniless  young  sculptors  who  camped  in 
primitive  simplicity  amid  the  grewsome  discarded  portraits 
of  Cook  County's  most  illustrious  citizens.  Several  of 
these  roomers  have  since  become  artists  of  wide  renown, 
and  I  refrain  from  disclosing  their  names.  No  doubt  they 
will  smile  as  they  recall  those  nights  amid  their  landlord's 
cast-off  handiwork. 

Taft  was  an  "easy  mark"  in  those  times,  a  shining  hope 
to  all  the  indigent  models,  discouraged  painters  and  other 
esthetic  derelicts  of  the  Columbian  Exposition.  No  artist 
suppliant  ever  knocked  at  his  door  without  getting  a  dol 
lar,  and  some  of  them  got  twenty.  For  several  years  Clark- 
son  and  I  had  him  on  our  minds  because  of  this  gentle  and 
yielding  disposition  until  at  last  we  discovered  that  in  one 
way  or  another,  in  spite  of  a  reckless  prodigality,  he  pros- 

6 


My    First    Winter    in    Chicago 

pered.  The  bread  which  he  cheerfully  cast  upon  these 
unknown  waters,  almost  always  returned  (sometimes  from 
another  direction)  in  loaves  at  least  as  large  as  biscuits. 
His  fame  steadily  increased  with  his  charity.  I  did  not 
understand  the  principle  of  his  manner  of  life  then,  and  I 
do  not  now.  By  all  the  laws  of  my  experience  he  should 
at  this  moment  be  in  the  poorhouse,  but  he  isn't — he  is 
rich  and  honored  and  loved. 

In  sculpture  he  was,  at  this  time  a  conservative,  a  wor 
shiper  of  the  Greek,  and  it  would  seem  that  I  became  his 
counter-irritant,  for  my  demand  for  "A  native  art"  kept 
him  wholesomely  stirred  up.  One  by  one  as  the  years 
passed  he  yielded  esthetic  positions  which  at  first  he  most 
stoutly  held.  He  conceded  that  the  Modern  could  not  be 
entirely  expressed  by  the  Ancient,  that  America  might 
sometime  grow  to  the  dignity  of  having  an'  art  of  its  own, 
and  that  in  sculpture  (as  in  painting  and  architecture) 
new  problems  might  arise.  Even  in  his  own  work  (al 
though  he  professed  but  one  ideal,  the  Athenian)  he  came 
at  last  to  include  the  plastic  value  of  the  red  man,  and  to 
find  in  the  expression  of  the  Sioux  or  Omaha  a  certain 
sorrowful  dignity  which  fell  parallel  with  his  own  grave 
temperament,  for,  despite  his  smiling  face,  his  best  work 
remained  somber,  almost  tragic  in  spirit. 

Henry  B.  Fuller,  who  in  The  Chevalier  of  Pensieri-Vani 
had  shown  himself  to  be  the  finest  literary  craftsman  in 
the  West,  became  (a  little  later)  a  leader  in  our  group 
and  a  keen  delight  to  us  all.  He  was  at  this  time  a  small, 
brown-bearded  man  of  thirty-five,  whose  quick  humor,  keen 
insight  and  unfailing  interest  in  all  things  literary  made 
him  a  caustic  corrective  of  the  bombast  to  which  our  local 
reviewers  were  sadly  liable.  Although  a  merciless  critic 
of  Chicago,  he  was  a  native  of  the  city,  and  his  comment 
on  its  life  had  to  be  confronted  with  such  equanimity  as 
our  self-elected  social  hierarchy  could  assume. 

7 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

Elusive  if  not  austere  with  strangers,  Henry's  laugh  (a 
musical  "ha  ha")  was  often  heard  among  his  friends.  His 
face  could  be  impassive  not  to  say  repellent  when  ap 
proached  by  those  in  whom  he  took  no  interest,  and  there 
were  large  numbers  of  his  fellow  citizens  for  whom  the 
author  of  Pensieri-Vani  had  only  contempt.  Strange  to 
say,  he  became  my  most  intimate  friend  and  confidant — 
antithetic  pair! 

Eugene  Field,  his  direct  opposite,  and  the  most  dis 
tinguished  member  of  "the  journalistic  gang,"  took  very 
little  interest  in  the  doings  of  "the  Bunnies"  and  few  of 
them  knew  him,  but  I  often  visited  him  in  his  home  on 
the  North  Side,  and  greatly  enjoyed  his  solemn-faced 
humor.  He  was  a  singular  character,  as  improvident  as 
Lorado  but  in  a  far  different  way. 

I  recall  meeting  him  one  day  on  the  street  wearing,  as 
usual,  a  long,  gray  plaid  ulster  with  enormous  pockets  at 
the  sides.  Confronting  me  with  coldly  solemn  visage,  he 
thrust  his  right  hand  into  his  pocket  and  lifted  a  heavy 
brass  candlestick  to  the  light.  "Look,"  he  said.  I  looked. 
Dropping  this  he  dipped  his  left  hand  into  the  opposite 
pocket  and  displayed  another  similar  piece,  then  with  a 
faint  smile  lifting  the  corners  of  his  wide,  thin-lipped 
mouth,  he  gravely  boomed,  "Brother  Garland— you  see 
before  you — a  man — who  lately — had  ten  dollars." 

Thereupon  he  went  his  way,  leaving  me  to  wonder 
whether  his  wife  would  be  equally  amused  with  his  latest 
purchase. 

His  library  was  filled  with  all  kinds  of  curious  objects 

worthless  junk  they  seemed  to  me — clocks,  snuffers,  but 
terflies,  and  the  like  but  he  also  possessed  many  auto 
graphed  books  and  photographs  whose  value  I  granted. 
His  cottage  which  was  not  large,  swarmed  with  growing 
boys  and  noisy  dogs;  and  Mrs.  Field,  a  sweet  and  patient 
soul,  seemed  sadly  out  of  key  with  her  husband's  habit  of 

8 


My    First    Winter    in    Chicago 

buying  collections  of  rare  moths,  door-knockers,  and  candle 
molds  with  money  which  should  have  gone  to  buy  chairs 
and  carpets  or  trousers  for  the  boys. 

Eugene  was  one  of  the  first  "Colyumists"  in  the  country, 
and  to  fill  his  "Sharps  and  Flats"  levied  pitilessly  upon 
his  friends.  From  time  to  time  we  all  figured  as  subjects 
for  his  humorous  paragraphs;  but  each  new  victim  under 
stood  and  smiled.  For  example,  in  his  column  I  read  one 
morning  these  words:  "La  Crosse,  a  small  city  in  Wiscon 
sin,  famous  for  the  fact  that  all  its  trains  back  into  town, 
and  as  the  home  of  Hamlin  Garland." 

He  was  one  of  the  most  popular  of  Western  writers,  and 
his  home  of  a  Sunday  was  usually  crowded  with  visitors, 
many  of  whom  were  actors.  I  recall  meeting  Francis  Wil 
son  there — also  E.  S.  Willard  and  Bram  Stoker — but  I  do 
not  remember  to  have  seen  Fuller  there,  although,  later, 
Roswell,  Eugene's  brother,  became  Fuller's  intimate  friend. 

George  Ade,  a  thin,  pale,  bright-eyed  young  Hoosier,  was 
a  frequent  visitor  at  Field's.  George  had  just  begun  to 
make  a  place  for  himself  as  the  author  of  a  column  in  the 
News  called  "Stories  of  the  Street  and  of  the  Town";  and 
John  T.  McCutcheon,  another  Hoosier  of  the  same  lean 
type  was  his  illustrator.  I  believed  in  them  both  and  took 
a  kind  of  elder  brother  interest  in  their  work. 

In  the  companionship  of  men  like  Field  and  Browne  and 
Taft,  I  was  happy.  My  writing  went  well,  and  if  I  regretted 
Boston,  I  had  the  pleasant  sense  of  being  so  near  West 
Salem  that  I  could  go  to  bed  in  a  train  at  ten  at  night,  and 
breakfast  with  my  mother  in  the  morning,  and  just  to 
prove  that  this  was  true  I  ran  up  to  the  Homestead  at 
Christmas  time  and  delivered  my  presents  in  person — keenly 
enjoying  the  smile  of  delight  with  which  my  mother  received 
them. 

West  Salem  was  like  a  scene  on  the  stage  that  day — a 
setting  for  a  rural  mid-winter  drama.  The  men  in  their 

9 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

gayly-colored  Mackinac  jackets,  the  sleighbells  jingling 
pleasantly  along  the  lanes,  the  cottage  roofs  laden  with 
snow,  and  the  sidewalks,  walled  with  drifts,  were  almost 
arctic  in  their  suggestion,  and  yet,  my  parents  in  the  shelter 
of  the  friendly  hills,  were  at  peace.  The  cold  was  not  being 
driven  against  them  by  the  wind  of  the  plain,  and  a  plenti 
ful  supply  of  food  and  fuel  made  their  fireside  comfortable 
and  secure. 

During  this  vacation  I  seized  the  opportunity  to  go  a 
little  farther  and  spend  a  few  days  in  the  Pineries  which 
I  had  never  seen.  Out  of  this  experience  I  gained  some 
beautiful  pictures  of  the  snowy  forest,  and  a  suggestion  for 
a  story  or  two.  A  few  days  later,  on  a  commission  from 
McClure's,  I  was  in  Pittsburg  writing  an  article  on  "Home 
stead  and  Its  Perilous  Trades,"  and  the  clouds  of  smoke, 
the  flaming  chimneys,  the  clang  of  steel,  the  roar  of  blast 
furnaces  and  the  thunder  of  monstrous  steel  rollers  made 
Wisconsin  lumber  camps  idyllic.  The  serene  white  peace  of 
West  Salem  set  Pittsburg  apart  as  a  sulphurous  hell  and  my 
description  of  it  became  a  passionate  indictment  of  an  in 
dustrial  system  which  could  so  work  and  so  house  its 
men.  The  grimy  hovels  in  which  the  toilers  lived  made 
my  own  homestead  a  poem.  More  than  ever  convinced 
that  our  social  order  was  unjust  and  impermanent,  I  sent 
in  my  "story,"  in  some  doubt  about  its  being  accepted.  It 
was  printed  with  illustrations  by  Orson  Lowell  and  was 
widely  quoted  at  the  time. 

Soon  after  this  I  made  a  trip  to  Memphis,  thus  gaining 
my  first  impression  of  the  South.  Like  most  northern  vis 
itors,  I  was  immediately  and  intensely  absorbed  in  the 
negroes.  Their  singing  entranced  me,  and  my  hosts,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Judah,  hired  a  trio  of  black  minstrels  to  come  in 
and  perform  for  me.  Their  songs  so  moved  me,  and  I 
became  so  interested  in  one  old  negro's  curious  chants  that 

10 


My    First    Winter    in    Chicago 

I  fairly  wore  them  out  with  demands  for  their  most  charac 
teristic  spirituals.  Some  of  the  hymns  were  of  such  sacred 
character  that  one  of  the  men  would  not  sing  them.  "I 
ain't  got  no  right  to  sing  dem  songs,"  he  said. 

In  Atlanta  I  met  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  who  had  done 
so  much  to  portray  the  negro's  inner  kindliness,  as  well  as 
his  singularly  poetic  outlook.  Harris  was  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  Atlanta  Constitution,  and  there  I  found  him  in  a  bare, 
prosaic  office,  a  short,  shy,  red-haired  man  whom  I  liked 
at  once.  Two  nights  later  I  was  dining  with  James  A. 
Herne  and  William  Dean  Howells  in  New  York  City,  and 
the  day  following  I  read  some  of  my  verses  for  the  Nine 
teenth  Century  Club.  At  the  end  of  March  I  was  again 
at  my  desk  in  Chicago. 

These  sudden  changes  of  scene,  these  dramatic  meetings, 
so  typical  of  my  life  for  many  years,  took  away  all  sense 
of  drudgery,  all  routine  weariness.  Seldom  remaining  in 
any  one  place  long  enough  to  become  bored  I  had  little 
chance  to  bore  others.  Literary  clubs  welcomed  my  read 
ings  and  lectures;  and,  being  vigorous  and  of  good  digestion, 
I  accepted  travel  as  a  diversion  as  well  as  a  business.  As  a 
student  of  American  life,  I  was  resolved  to  know  every 
phase  of  it. 

Among  my  pleasant  jobs  I  recall  the  putting  into  shape 
of  a  "Real  Conversation"  with  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  the 
material  for  which  had  been  gained  in  a  visit  to  Greenfield, 
Riley's  native  town,  during  August  of  the  previous  year. 

My  first  meeting  with  Riley  had  been  in  Boston  at  a 
time  when  I  was  a  penniless  student  and  he  the  shining, 
highly-paid  lecturer;  and  I  still  suffered  a  feeling  of  wonder 
that  a  poet — any  poet — could  demand  such  pay.  I  did  not 
resent  it — I  only  marveled  at  it — for  in  our  conversation  he 
had  made  his  philosophy  plain. 

"Tell  of  the  things  just  like  they  was,  they  don't  need 

ii 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

no  excuse,"  cne  of  his  characters  said.  "Don't  tech  'em 
up  as  the  poets  does  till  they're  all  too  fine  fer  use,"  and  in 
his  talk  with  me  Riley  quaintly  added,  "Nature  is  good 
enough  for  God,  it's  good  enough  for  me." 

In  this  article  which  I  wrote  for  McClure's,  I  made  com 
ment  on  the  essential  mystery  of  the  poet's  art,  a  conjury 
which  is  able  to  transmute  a  perfectly  commonplace  land 
scape  into  something  fine  and  mellow  and  sweet;  for  the 
region  in  which  Riley  spent  his  youth,  and  from  which  he 
derived  most  of  his  later  material,  was  to  me  a  depressing 
land,  a  country  without  a  hill,  a  river  or  a  lake;  a  com 
monplace  country,  flat,  unkempt  and  without  a  line  of 
beauty,  and  yet  from  these  rude  fields  and  simple  gardens 
the  singer  had  drawn  the  sweetest  honey  of  song,  song 
with  a  tang  in  it,  like  the  odor  of  ripe  buckwheat  and  the 
taste  of  frost-bit  persimmons.  It  reinforced  my  resolution 
that  the  mid-land  was  about  to  blossom  into  art. 

In  travel  and  in  work  such  as  this  and  in  pleasant  inter 
course  with  the  painters,  sculptors,  and  writers  of  Chicago 
my  first  winter  in  the  desolate,  drab,  and  tumultuous  city 
passed  swiftly  and  on  the  whole  profitably,  I  no  longer 
looked  backward  to  Boston,  but  as  the  first  warm  spring- 
winds  began  to  blow,  my  thoughts  turned  towards  my 
newly-acquired  homestead  and  the  old  mother  who  was 
awaiting  me  there. 

Eager  to  start  certain  improvements  which  should  tend 
to  make  the  house  more  nearly  the  kind  of  dwelling  place 
I  had  promised  myself  it  should  become,  hungry  for  the 
soil,  rejoicing  in  the  thought  of  once  more  planting  and 
building,  I  took  the  train  for  the  North  with  all  my  sum 
mer  ward-robe  and  most  of  my  manuscripts,  with  no  in 
tention  of  reentering  the  city  till  October  at  the  earliest. 


12 


CHAPTER  TWO 

I    Return    to    the    Saddle 

pass  from  the  crowds,  the  smoke  and  the  iron  clangor 
JL  of  Chicago  into  the  clear  April  air  of  West  Salem 
was  a  celestial  change  for  me.  For  many  years  the  clock 
of  my  seasons  had  been  stilled.  The  coming  of  the  birds,  the 
budding  of  the  leaves,  the  serial  blossoming  of  spring  had 
not  touched  me,  and  as  I  walked  up  the  street  that  exqui 
site  morning,  a  reminiscent  ecstasy  filled  my  heart.  The 
laughter  of  the  robins,  the  shrill  ki-ki-ki  of  the  golden-wing 
woodpeckers,  and  the  wistful  whistle  of  the  lark,  brought 
back  my  youth,  my  happiest  youth,  and  when  my  mother 
met  me  at  the  door  it  seemed  that  all  my  cares  and  all  my 
years  of  city  life  had  fallen  from  me. 

"Well,  here  I  am! "  I  called,  "ready  for  the  spring's  work." 

With  a  silent  laugh,  as  preface,  she  replied,  "You'll  get 
a-plenty.  Your  father  is  all  packed,  impatient  to  leave  for 
Ordway." 

The  old  soldier,  who  came  in  from  the  barn  a  few  mo 
ments  later,  confirmed  this.  "I'm  no  truck  farmer,"  he 
explained  with  humorous  contempt.  "I  turn  this  onion 
patch  over  to  you.  It's  no  place  for  me.  In  two  days  I'll 
be  broad-casting  wheat  on  a  thousand-acre  farm.  That's 
my  size" — a  fact  which  I  admitted. 

As  we  sat  at  breakfast  he  went  on  to  say  that  he  found 
Wisconsin  woefully  unprogressive.  "These  fellows  back 
here  are  all  stuck  in  the  mud.  They've  got  to  wake  up  to 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

the  reform  movements.  I'll  be  glad  to  get  back  to  Dakota 
where  people  are  alive." 

With  the  spirit  of  the  seed-sower  swelling  within  him  he 
took  the  noon  train,  handing  over  to  me  the  management  of 
the  Homestead. 

An  hour  later  mother  and  I  went  out  to  inspect  the  garden 
and  to  plan  the  seeding.  The  pie-plant  leaves  were  unfold 
ing  and  slender  asparagus  spears  were  pointing  from  the 
mold.  The  smell  of  burning  leaves  brought  back  to  us 
both,  with  magic  power,  memories  of  the  other  springs  and 
other  plantings  on  the  plain.  It  was  glorious,  it  was 
medicinal ! 

"This  is  the  life!"  I  exultantly  proclaimed.  "Work  is 
just  what  I  need.  I  shall  set  to  it  at  once.  Aren't  you  glad 
you  are  here  in  this  lovely  valley  and  not  out  on  the  bleak 
Dakota  plain?" 

Mother's  face  sobered.  "Yes,  I  like  it  here — it  seems  more 
like  home  than  any  other  place — and  yet  I  mjss  the  prairie 
and  my  Ordway  friends." 

As  I  went  about  the  village  I  came  to  a  partial  under 
standing  of  her  feeling.  The  small  dark  shops,  the  uneven 
sidewalks,  the  ricketty  wooden  awnings  were  closely  in  char 
acter  with  the  easy-going  citizens  who  moved  leisurely  and 
contentedly  about  their  small  affairs.  It  came  to  me  (with 
a  sense  of  amusement)  that  these  coatless  shopkeepers  who 
dealt  out  sugar  and  kerosene  while  wearing  their  derby  hats 
on  the  backs  of  their  heads,  were  not  only  my  neighbors, 
but  members  of  the  Board  of  Education.  Though  still 
primitive  to  my  city  eyes,  they  no  longer  appeared  remote. 
Something  in  their  names  and  voices  touched  me  nearly. 
They  were  American.  Their  militant  social  democracy  was 
at  once  comical  and  corrective. 

O,  the  peace,  the  sweetness  of  those  days!  To  be  awak 
ened  by  the  valiant  challenge  of  early-rising  roosters;  to 

14 


I    Return    to    the    Saddle 

hear  the  chuckle  of  dawn-light  worm-hunting  robins 
brought  a  return  of  boy-hood's  exultation.  Not  only  did 
my  muscles  harden  to  the  spade  and  the  hoe,  my  soul  re 
joiced  in  a  new  and  delightful  sense  of  establishment.  I 
had  returned  to  citizenship.  I  was  a  proprietor.  The 
clock  of  the  seasons  had  resumed  its  beat. 

Hiring  a  gardener,  I  bought  a  hand-book  on  Horticul 
ture  and  announced  my  intent  to  make  those  four  fat 
acres  feed  my  little  flock.  I  was  now  a  land  enthusiast. 
My  feet  laid  hold  upon  the  earth.  I  almost  took  root! 

With  what  secret  satisfaction  I  planned  to  widen  the 
front  porch  and  build  a  two-story  bay-window  on  the  north 
end  of  the  sitting  room — an  enterprise  of  such  audacity 
that  I  kept  it  strictly  to  myself!  It  meant  the  extravagant 
outlay  of  nearly  two  hundred  dollars — but  above  and  beyond 
that,  it  involved  cutting  a  hole  in  the  wall  and  cluttering 
up  the  yard;  therefore  I  thought  it  best  to  keep  my  plot 
hidden  from  my  mother  till  mid-summer  gave  more  leisure 
to  us  all. 

My  notebook  of  that  spring  is  crowded  with  descrip 
tions,  almost  lyrical,  of  the  glory  of  sunsets  and  the  beauty 
of  bird-song  and  budding  trees — even  the  loud-voiced,  cheer 
ful  democracy  of  the  village  was  grateful  to  me. 

"Yesterday  I  was  deep  in  the  tumult  of  Chicago,"  runs 
the  entry,  "  to-day,  I  am  hoeing  in  my  sun-lit  garden,  hear 
ing  the  mourning-dove  coo  and  the  cat-birds  cry.  Last 
night  as  the  sun  went  down  the  hill-tops  to  the  west  be 
came  vividly  purple  with  a  subtle  illusive  deep-crimson 
glow  beneath,  while  the  sky  above  their  tops,  a  saffron 
dome  rose  almost  to  the  zenith.  These  mystical  things  are 
here  joined:  The  trill  of  black-birds  near  at  hand,  the 
cackle  of  barn-yard  fowls,  the  sound  of  hammers,  a  plow 
man  talking  to  his  team,  the  pungent  smoke  of  burning 
leaves,  the  cool,  sweet,  spring  wind  and  the  glowing  down- 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

pouring  sunshine — all  marvelous  and  satisfying  to  me  and 
mine.  This  is  home!" 

On  the  twelfth  of  April,  however,  a  most  dramatic  re 
versal  to  winter  took  place.  "The  day  remained  beautifully 
springlike  till  about  two  o'clock  when  a  gray  haze  came 
rushing  downward  from  the  north-west.  Big  black  clouds 
developed  with  portentous  rapidity.  Thunder  arose,  and  an 
icy  wind,  furious  and  swift  as  a  tornado  roared  among  the 
trees.  The  rain,  chilled  almost  into  hail,  drummed  on  the 
shingles.  The  birds  fell  silent,  the  hens  scurried  to  shelter. 
In  ten  minutes  the  cutting  blast  died  out.  A  dead  calm  suc 
ceeded.  Then  out  burst  the  sun,  flooding  the  land  with 
laughter!  The  black-birds  resumed  their  piping,  the  fowls 
ventured  forth,  and  the  whole  valley  again  lay  beaming 
and  blossoming  under  a  perfect  sky." 

The  following  night  I  was  in  the  city  watching  a  noble 
performance  of  "Tristan  and  Isolde!" 

I  took  enormous  satisfaction  in  the  fact  that  I  could 
plant  peas  in  my  garden  till  noon  and  hear  a  concert  in 
Chicago  on  the  same  day.  The  arrangement  seemed  ideal. 

On  May  gth  I  was  again  at  home,  "the  first  whippoor- 
will  sang  to-night — trees  are  in  full  leaf,"  I  note. 

In  a  big  square  room  in  the  eastern  end  of  the  house, 
I  set  up  a  handmade  walnut  desk  which  I  had  found  in 
LaCrosse,  and  on  this  I  began  to  write  in  the  Inspiration 
of  morning  sun-shine  and  bird-song.  For  four  hours  I  bent 
above  my  pen,  and  each  afternoon  I  sturdily  flourished 
spade  and  hoe,  while  mother  hobbled  about  with  cane  in 
hand  to  see  that  I  did  it  right.  "You  need  watching,"  she 
laughingly  said. 

With  a  cook  and  a  housemaid,  a  man  to  work  the  garden, 
and  a  horse  to  plow  out  my  corn  and  potatoes,  I  began  to 
wear  the  composed  dignity  of  an  earl.  I  pruned  trees, 
shifted  flower  beds  and  established  berry  patches  with  the 

16 


I    Return    to    the    Saddle 

large-handed  authority  of  a  southern  planter.  It  was  com 
ical,  it  was  delightful! 

To  eat  home-cooked  meals  after  years  of  dreadful  res 
taurants  gave  me  especial  satisfaction,  but  alas!  there 
was  a  flaw  in  my  lute.  We  had  to  eat  in  our  living  room; 
and  when  I  said  "Mother,  one  of  these  days  I'm  going  to 
move  the  kitchen  to  the  south  and  build  a  real  sure-enough 
dining  room  in  between,"  she  turned  upon  me  with  startled 
gaze. 

"You'd  better  think  a  long  time  about  that,"  she  warn- 
ingly  replied.  "We're  perfectly  comfortable  the  way  we 
are." 

"Comfortable?  Yes,  but  we  must  begin  to  think  of  be 
ing  luxurious.  There's  nothing  too  good  for  you,  mother." 

Early  in  July  my  brother  Franklin  joined  me  in  the 
garden  work,  and  then  my  mother's  cup  of  contentment 
fairly  overflowed  its  brim.  So  far  as  we  knew  she  had  no 
care,  no  regret.  Day  by  day  she  sat  in  an  easy  chair  under 
the  trees,  watching  us  as  we  played  ball  on  the  lawn,  or 
cut  weeds  in  the  garden;  and  each  time  we  looked  at  her, 
we  both  acknowledged  a  profound  sense  of  satisfaction,  of 
relief.  Never  again  would  she  burn  in  the  suns  of  the 
arid  plains,  or  cower  before  the  winds  of  a  desolate  winter. 
She  was  secure.  "You  need  never  work  again,"  I  assured 
her.  "You  can  get  up  when  you  please  and  go  to  bed  when 
you  please.  Your  only  job  is  to  sit  in  the  shade  and  boss 
the  rest  of  us,"  and  to  this  she  answered  only  with  a  silent, 
characteristic  chuckle  of  delight. 

"The  Junior,"  as  I  called  my  brother,  enjoyed  the  home 
stead  quite  as  much  as  I.  Together  we  painted  the  porch, 
picked  berries,  hoed  potatoes,  and  trimmed  trees.  Every 
thing  we  did,  everything  we  saw,  recovered  for  us  some  part 
of  our  distant  boyhood.  The  noble  lines  of  the  hills  to  the 
west,  the  weeds  of  the  road-side,  the  dusty  weather-beaten, 

17 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

covered-bridges,  the  workmen  in  the  fields,  the  voices  of 
our  neighbors,  the  gossip  of  the  village — all  these  sights  and 
sounds  awakened  deep-laid,  associated  tender  memories. 
The  cadence  of  every  song,  the  quality  of  every  resounding 
jest  made  us  at  home,  once  and  for  all.  Our  twenty-five- 
year  stay  on  the  level  lands  of  Iowa  and  Dakota  seemed 
only  an  unsuccessful  family  exploration— our  life  in  the 
city  merely  a  business,  winter  adventure. 

To  visit  among  the  farmers— to  help  at  haying  or  harvest 
ing,  brought  back  minute  touches  of  the  olden,  wondrous 
prairie  world.  We  went  swimming  in  the  river  just  as  we 
used  to  do  when  lads,  rejoicing  in  the  caress  of  the  wind, 
the  sting  of  the  cool  water,  and  on  such  expeditions  we 
often  thought  of  Burton  and  others  of  our  play-mates  far 
away,  and  of  Uncle  David,  in  his  California  exile.  "I  wish 
he,  too,  could  enjoy  this  sweet  and  tranquil  world,"  I  said, 
and  in  this  desire  my  brother  joined. 

We  wore  the  rudest  and  simplest  clothing,  and  hoed 
(when  we  hoed)  with  furious  strokes;  but  as  the  sun  grew 
hot  we  usually  fled  to  the  shade  of  the  great  maples  which 
filled  the  back  yard,  and  there,  at  ease,  recounted  the 
fierce  toil  of  the  Iowa  harvest  fields,  recalling  the  names  of 
the  men  who  shared  it  with  us, — and  so,  while  all  around 
us  green  things  valorously  expanded,  and  ripening  apples 
turned  to  scarlet  and  gold  in  their  coverts  of  green,  we 
burrowed  deep  in  the  soil  like  the  badger  which  is'  the 
symbol  of  our  native  state. 

After  so  many  years  of  bleak  and  treeless  farm-lands,  it 
seemed  that  our  mother  could  not  get  enough  of  the  luxuri 
ant  foliage,  the  bloom  and  the  odorous  sweetness  of  this 
lovely  valley.  Hour  by  hour,  day  by  day,  she  sat  on  the 
porch,  or  out  under  the  trees,  watching  the  cloud  shadows 
slide  across  the  hills,  hearing  the  whistle  of  the  orioles  and 
the  love  songs  of  the  cat-bird,  happy  in  the  realization  that 

18 


I    Return    to    the    Saddle 

both  her  sons  were,  at  last,  within  the  sound  of  her  voice. 
She  had  but  one  unsatisfied  desire  (a  desire  which  she  shyly 
reiterated),  and  that  was  her  longing  for  a  daughter,  but 
neither  Frank  nor  I,  at  the  moment,  had  any  well-defined 
hope  of  being  able  to  fulfill  that  demand. 

My  life  had  not  been  one  to  bring  about  intimate  rela 
tionships  with  women.  I  had  been  too  poor  and  too  busy 
in  Boston  to  form  any  connections  other  than  just  good 
friendships,  and  even  now,  my  means  would  not  permit  a 
definite  thought  of  marriage.  "Where  can  I  keep  a  wife? 
My  two  little  rooms  in  Chicago  are  all  the  urban  home  I  can 
afford,  and  to  bring  a  daughter  of  the  city  to  live  in  West 
Salem  would  be  dangerous."  Nevertheless,  I  promised 
mother  that  on  my  return  to  Chicago,  I  would  look  around 
and  see  what  I  could  find. 

For  three  months — that  is  to  say  during  May,  June 
and  July,  I  remained  concerned  with  potato  bugs,  currant 
worms,  purslane  and  other  implant  garden  concerns,  but 
in  August  I  started  on  a  tour  which  had  far-reaching  effects. 

Though  still  at  work  upon  Rose  of  Dutchefs  Coolly, 
I  was  beginning  to  meditate  on  themes  connected  with 
Colorado,  and  as  the  heat  of  July  intensified  in  the  low 
country,  I  fell  to  dreaming  of  the  swift  mountain  streams 
whose  bright  waters  I  had  seen  in  a  previous  trip,  and  so 
despite  all  my  protestations,  I  found  myself  in  Colorado 
Springs  one  August  day,  a  guest  of  Louis  Ehrich,  a  New 
Yorker  and  fellow  reformer,  in  exile  for  his  health.  It  was 
at  his  table  that  I  met  Professor  Fernow,  chief  of  the 
National  Bureau  of  Forestry,  who  was  in  the  west  on  a 
tour  of  the  Federal  Forests,  and  full  of  enthusiasm  for 
his  science. 

His  talk  interested  me  enormously.  I  forecast,  dimly, 
something  of  the  elemental  change  which  scientific  control 
was  about  to  bring  into  the  mountain  west,  and  when 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

(sensing  my  genuine  interest)  he  said  "Why  not  accom 
pany  me  on  my  round?"  I  accepted  instantly,  and  my 
good  friends,  the  Ehrichs  out-fitted  me  for  the  enterprise. 

We  left  next  day  for  Glenwood  Springs,  at  which  point 
Fernow  hired  horses  and  a  guide  who  knew  the  streams  and 
camps  of  the  White  River  Plateau,  and  early  on  the  second 
morning  we  set  out  on  a  trail  which,  in  a  literary  sense, 
carried  me  a  long  way  and  into  a  new  world.  From  the 
plain  I  ascended  to  the  peaks.  From  the  barbed-wire 
lanes  of  Iowa  and  Kansas  I  entered  the  thread-like  paths 
of  the  cliffs,  and  (most  important  of  all)  I  returned  to  the 
saddle.  I  became  once  more  the  horseman  in  a  region  of 
horsemen. 

For  the  first  time  in  nearly  twenty  years  I  swung  to  the 
saddle,  and  by  that  act  recovered  a  power  and  a  joy  which 
only  verse  could  express.  I  found  myself  among  men  of 
such  endurance  and  hardihood  that  I  was  ashamed  to 
complain  of  my  aching  bones  and  overstrained  muscles — 
men  to  whom  dark  nights,  precipitous  trails,  noxious  in 
sects,  mud  and  storms  were  all  "a  part  of  the  game." 

In  those  few  days  I  absorbed  the  essential  outlines  of  a 
new  world.  My  note-book  of  the  time  is  proof  of  it — and 
"The  Prairie  in  the  Sky,"  which  was  the  title  of  the  article 
I  wrote  for  Harper's  Weekly,  is  further  evidence  of  it. 
How  beautiful  it  all  was!  As  I  look  back  upon  it  I  see 
green  parks  lit  with  larkspur  and  painter's  brush.  I  taste 
the  marvelous  freshness  of  the  air.  The  ptarmigan  scuttles 
away  among  the  rocks,  the  marmot  whistles,  the  conies 
utter  their  slender  wistful  cries. 

That  trail  led  me  back  to-  the  hunter's  cabin,  to  the 
miner's  shack  on  whose  rough-hewn  walls  the  fire-light 
flickered  in  a  kind  of  silent  music.  It  set  me  once  again 
in  the  atmosphere  of  daring  and  filled  me  with  the  spirit 
of  pioneer  adventure. 

20 


I    Return    to    the    Saddle 

In  a  physical  sense  I  ended  my  exploration  ten  days  later, 
but  in  imagination  I  continued  to  ride  "The  High  Country." 
I  had  entered  a  fresh  scene — discovered  a  new  enthusiasm. 

By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  I  at  once  set  about 
the  composition  of  a  Wild  West  novel,  but  for  those  who 
may  be  interested  in  the  literary  side  of  this  chronicle,  I 
will  admit  that  this  splendid  trip  into  high  Colorado,  marks 
the  beginning  of  my  career  as  a  fictionist  of  the  Mountain 
West. 

Thereafter  neither  the  coulee  country  nor  the  prairie 
served  exclusively  as  material  for  my  books.  From  the 
plains,  which  were  becoming  each  year  more  crowded,  more 
prosaic,  I  fled  in  imagination  as  in  fact  to  the  looming 
silver-and-purple  summits  of  the  Continental  Divide,  while 
in  my  mind  an  ambition  to  embody,  as  no  one  at  that  time 
had  done,  the  spirit  and  the  purpose  of  the  Rocky  Moun 
tain  trailer  was  vaguely  forming  in  my  mind.  To  my 
home  in  Wisconsin  I  carried  back  a  fragment  of  rock,  whose 
gray  mass,  beautifully  touched  with  gold  and  amber  and 
orange-colored  lichens  formed  a  part  of  the  narrow  cause 
way  which  divides  the  White  River  from  the  Bear.  It  was 
a  talisman  of  the  land  whose  rushing  waters,  majestic  for 
ests  and  exquisite  Alpine  meadows  I  desired  to  hold  in 
memory,  and  with  this  stone  on  my  desk  I  wrote.  It  aided 
me  in  recalling  the  scenes  and  the  characters  I  had  so 
keenly  admired. 


In  calling  upon  Lorado  one  afternoon  soon  after  my 
return  to  Chicago  I  was  surprised  and  a  little  disconcerted 
to  find  two  strange  young  ladies  making  themselves  very 
much  at  home  in  his  studio.  In  greeting  me  he  remarked 
in  a  mood  of  sly  mischief,  "You  will  not  approve  of  these 
girls — they  are  on  their  way  to  Paris  to  study  sculpture,  but 

21 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

I  want  you  to  know  them.     They  are  Janet  Scudder  and 
my  sister  Zulime." 

Up  to  this  time,  notwithstanding  our  growing  friendship, 
I  was  not  aware  that  he  had  a  sister,  but  I  greeted  Miss 
Taft  with  something  like  fraternal  interest.  She  was  a 
handsome  rather  pale  girl  with  fine,  serious  gray-blue  eyes, 
and  a  composed  and  graceful  manner.  Her  profile  was  par 
ticularly  good  and  as  she  was  not  greatly  interested  in 
looking  at  me  I  had  an  excellent  chance  to  study  her. 

Lorado  explained  "My  sister  has  been  in  Kansas  visiting 
mother  and  father  and  is  now  on  her  way  to  New  York 
to  take  a  steamer  for  France.  .  .  .  She  intends  to  remain 
abroad  for  two  years."  he  added. 

Knowing  that  I  was  at  that  moment  in  the  midst  of  writ 
ing  a  series  of  essays  on  The  National  Spirit  in  American 
Art,  he  expected  this  to  draw  my  fire — and  it  did.  "Why 
go  abroad,"  I  demanded  bluntly.  "Why  not  stay  right 
here  and  study  modeling  with  your  brother?  Paris  is  no 
place  for  an  American  artist." 

With  an  amused  glance  at  her  friend,  Miss  Scudder, 
Miss  Taft  replied  in  a  tone  of  tolerant  contempt  for  my 
ignorance,  "One  doesn't  get  very  far  in  art  without  Paris." 

Somewhat  nettled  by  her  calm  inflection  and  her  super 
cilious  glance  I  hotly  retorted,  "Nonsense!  You  can  ac 
quire  all  the  technic  you  require,  right  here  in  Chicago. 
If  you  are  in  earnest,  and  are  really  in  search  of  instruction 
you  can  certainly  get  it  in  Boston  or  New  York.  Stay  in 
your  own  countiy  whatever  you  do.  This  sending  stu 
dents  at  their  most  impressionable  age  to  the  Old  World  to 
absorb  Old  World  conventions  and  prejudices  is  all  wrong. 
It  makes  of  them  something  which  is  neither  American 
nor  European.  Suppose  France  did  that?  No  nation  has 
an  art  worth  speaking  of  unless  it  has  a  national  spirit." 

Of  course  this  is  only  a  brief  report  of  my  harangue 

22 


I    Return    to    the    Saddle 

which  might  just  as  well  have  remained  unspoken,  so  far 
as  Miss  Taft  was  concerned,  and  when  her  brother  came 
to  her  aid  I  retired  worsted.  The  two  pilgrims  went  their 
way  leaving  me  to  hammer  Lorado  at  my  leisure. 

I  wish  I  could  truthfully  say  that  this  brief  meeting  with 
Zulime  Taft  filled  me  with  a  deep  desire  to  see  her  again 
but  I  cannot  do  so.  On  the  contrary,  my  recollection  is 
that  I  considered  her  a  coldly-haughty  young  person  run 
ning  away  from  her  native  land,  not  to  study  art  but  to 
have  a  pleasant  time  in  Paris — while  she  (no  doubt)  re 
garded  me  as  a  rude,  forth-putting  anarch — which  I  was.  At 
this  point  our  acquaintance  and  our  controversy  rested. 

As  the  months  and  years  passed  I  heard  of  her  only 
through  some  incidental  remark  of  her  brother.  Having 
no  slightest  premonition  of  the  part  she  was  to  play  in  my 
after  life,  I  made  no  inquiries  concerning  her.  She,  how 
ever,  followed  me — as  I  afterward  learned,  by  means  of  my 
essays  and  stories  in  the  magazines  but  remained  quite  un 
interested  (so  far  as  I  know)  in  the  personality  of  their 
author. 


CHAPTER   THREE 
In    the    Footsteps    of    General    Grant 

AMONG  the  new  esthetic  and  literary  enterprises  which 
the  Exposition  had  brought  to  Chicago  was  the  high- 
spirited  publishing  firm  of  Stone  and  Kimball,  which  started 
out  valiantly  in  the  spring  of  '94.  The  head  of  the  house, 
a  youth  just  out  of  Harvard,  was  Herbert  Stone,  son  of 
my  friend  Melville  Stone,  manager  of  the  Associated  Press. 
Kimball  was  Herbert's  classmate. 

Almost  before  he  had  opened  his  office,  Herbert  came  to 
me  to  get  a  manuscript.  "Eugene  Field  has  given  us  one," 
he  urged,  "and  we  want  one  from  you.  We  are  starting  a 
real  publishing  house  in  Chicago  and  we  need  your  sup 
port." 

There  was  no  resisting  such  an  appeal.  Having  cast  in 
my  lot  with  Chicago,  it  was  inevitable  that  I  should  ally 
myself  with  its  newest  literary  enterprise,  a  business  which 
expressed  something  of  my  faith  in  the  west.  Not  only 
did  I  turn  over  to  Stone  the  rights  to  Main  Traveled  Roads, 
together  with  a  volume  of  verse — I  promised  him  a  book 
of  essays — and  a  novel. 

These  aspiring  young  collegians  were  joined  in  '95  by 
another  Harvard  man,  a  tall,  dark,  smooth-faced  youth 
named  Harrison  Rhodes,  and  when,  of  an  afternoon  these 
three  missionaries  of  culture  each  in  a  long  frock  coat, 
tightly  buttoned,  with  cane,  gloves  and  shining  silk  hats' 
paced  side  by  side  down  the  Lake  Shore  Drive  they  had  the 
effect  of  an  esthetic  invasion,  but  their  crowning  audacity 

24 


In    the    Footsteps    of    General    Grant 

was  a  printed  circular  which  announced  that  tea  would  be 
served  in  their  office  in  the  Caxton  Building  on  Saturday 
afternoons!  Finally  as  if  to  convince  the  city  of  their 
utter  madness,  this  intrepid  trio  adventured  the  founding 
of  a  literary  magazine  to  be  called  The  Chap  Book!  Cul 
ture  on  the  Middle  Border  had  at  last  begun  to  hum! 

Despite  the  smiles  of  elderly  scoffers,  the  larger  number 
of  my  esthetic  associates  felt  deeply  grateful  to  these  de 
voted  literary  pioneers,  whose  taste,  enterprise  and  humor 
were  all  sorely  needed  "in  our  midst."  If  not  precisely 
cosmopolitan  they  were  at  least  in  touch  with  London. 

Early  in  '94  they  brought  out  a  lovely  edition  of  Main 
Traveled  Roads  and  a  new  book  called  Prairie  Songs. 
Neither  of  these  volumes  sold — the  firm  had  no  special 
facilities  for  selling  books,  but  their  print  and  binding  de 
lighted  me,  and  in  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  I  gladly  let 
them  publish  a  collection  of  essays  called  Crumbling  Idols, 
a  small  screed  which  aroused  an  astonishing  tumult  of  com 
ment,  mostly  antagonistic.  Walter  Page,  editor  of  the 
Forum,  in  which  one  of  the  key-note  chapters  appeared, 
told  me  that  over  a  thousand  editorials  were  written  upon 
my  main  thesis. 

In  truth  the  attention  which  this  iconoclastic  declaration 
of  faith  received  at  the  hands  of  critics  was  out  of  all  pro 
portion  to  its  size.  Its  explosive  power  was  amazing.  As 
I  read  it  over  now,  with  the  clamor  of  "Cubism,"  "Imagism" 
and  "Futurism"  in  my  ears,  it  seems  a  harmless  and  on 
the  whole  rather  reasonable  plea  for  National  Spirit  and 
the  freedom  of  youth,  but  in  those  days  all  of  my  books 
had  mysterious  power  for  arousing  opposition,  and  most 
reviews  of  my  work  were  so  savage  that  I  made  a  point 
of  not  reading  them  for  the  reason  that  they  either  embit 
tered  me,  or  were  so  lacking  in  discrimination  as  to  have 
no  value.  In  spite  of  all  appearances  to  the  contrary,  I 

25 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

hated  contention,  therefore  I  left  consideration  of  these 
assaults  entirely  to  my  publishers.  (I  learned  afterwards 
that  Miss  Taft  was  greatly  interested  in  Crumbling  Idols. 
Perhaps  she  assumed  that  I  was  writing  at  her.) 

Meanwhile  in  Rose  of  Dut chef's  Coolly,  the  manuscript 
of  which  I  had  carried  about  with  me  on  many  of  my  lec 
turing  trips,  I  was  attempting  to  embody  something  of 
Chicago  life,  a  task  which  I  found  rather  difficult.  After 
nine  years  of  life  in  Boston,  the  city  by  the  lake  seemed 
depressingly  drab  and  bleak,  and  my  only  hope  lay  in 
representing  it  not  as  I  saw  it,  but  as  it  appeared  to  my 
Wisconsin  heroine  who  came  to  it  from  Madison  and  who 
perceived  in  it  the  mystery  and  the  beauty  which  I  had  lost. 
To  Rose,  fresh  from  the  farm,  it  was  a  great  capital,  and 
the  lake  a  majestic  sea.  As  in  A  Spoil  of  Office,  I  had  tried 
to  maintain  the  point  of  view  of  a  countryman,  so  now  I 
attempted  to  embody  in  Rose  of  Dutcher's  Coolly,  a  pic 
ture  of  Chicago  as  an  ambitious  young  girl  from  the  Wis 
consin  farm  would  see  it. 

In  my  story  Rose  Dutcher  made  her  way  from  Bluff 
Siding  to  the  State  University,  and  from  Madison  to  a 
fellowship  in  the  artistic  and  literary  Chicago,  of  which 
[  was  a  part.  Her  progress  was  intended  to  be  typical. 
I  said,  "I  will  depict  the  life  of  a  girl  who  has  ambitious 
desires,  and  works  toward  her  goal  as  blindly  and  as  deter 
minedly  as  a  boy."  It  was  a  new  thesis  so  far  as  Western 
girls  were  concerned,  and  I  worked  long  and  carefully  on 
the  problem,  carrying  the  manuscript  back  and  forth  with 
me  for  two  years. 

As  spring  came  on,  I  again  put  "Rose"  in  my  trunk  and 
hastened  back  to  West  Salem  in  order  to  build  the  two-story 
bay-window  which  I  had  minutely  planned,  which  was,  in 
deed,  almost  as  important  as  my  story  and  much  more 

26 


In  the  Footsteps  of  General  Grant 

exciting.  To  begin  the  foundation  of  that  extension  was 
like  setting  in  motion  the  siege  of  a  city!  It  was  extrava 
gant — reckless — nevertheless  assisted  by  a  neighbor  who 
was  clever  at  any  kind  of  building,  I  set  to  work  in  boyish, 
illogical  enthusiasm. 

Mother  watched  us  tear  out  and  rebuild  with  uneasy 
glance  but  when  the  windows  were  in  and  a  new  carpet 
with  an  entire  "parlor  suite"  to  match,  arrived  from  the 
city,  her  alarm  became  vocal.  "You  mustn't  spend  your 
money  for  things  like  these.  We  can't  afford  such  luxuries." 

"Don't  you  worry  about  my  money,"  I  replied,  "There's 
more  where  I  found  this.  There's  nothing  too  good  for  you, 
mother." 

How  sweet  and  sane  and  peaceful  and  afar  off  those 
blessed  days  seem  to  me  as  I  muse  over  this  page.  At  the 
village  shops  sirloin  steak  was  ten  cents  a  pound,  chickens 
fifty  cents  a  pair  and  as  for  eggs — I  couldn't  give  ours 
away,  at  least  in  the  early  summer, — and  all  about  us  were 
gardens  laden  with  fruit  and  vegetables,  more  than  we 
could  eat  or  sell  or  feed  to  the  pigs.  Wars  were  all  in  the 
past  and  life  a  simple  matter  of  working  out  one's  own  in 
dividual  problems.  Never  again  shall  I  feel  that  confidence 
in  the  future,  that  joy  in  the  present.  I  had  no  doubts — 
none  that  I  can  recall. 

My  brother  came  again  in  June  and  joyfully  aided  me 
in  my  esthetic  pioneering.  We  amazed  the  town  by  seeding 
down  a  potato  patch  and  laying  out  a  tennis  court  thereon, 
the  first  play-ground  of  its  kind  in  Hamilton  township, 
and  often  as  we  played  of  an  afternoon,  farmers  on  their 
way  to  market  with  loads  of  grain  or  hogs,  paused  to  watch 
our  game  and  make  audible  comment  on  our  folly.  We 
also  bought  a  lawn-mower,  the  second  in  the  town,  and 
shaved  our  front  yard.  We  took  down  the  old  picket 

27 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

fence  in  front  of  the  house  and  we  planted  trees  and  flowers, 
until  at  last  some  of  the  elderly  folk  disgustedly  exclaimed, 
"What  won't  them  Garland  boys  do  next!" 

Without  doubt  we  "started  something"  in  the  sleepy 
village.  Others  following  our  example  went  so  far  as  to 
take  down  their  own  fences  and  to  buy  lawn-mowers.  That 
we  were  planning  waterworks  and  a  bath-room  remained  a 
secret — this  was  too  revolutionary  to  be  spoken  of  for  the 
present.  We  were  forced  to  make  progress  slowly. 

Rose  of  Butcher's  Coolly,  published  during  this  year,  was 
attacked  quite  as  savagely  as  Main  Traveled  Roads  had 
been,  and  this  criticism  saddened  and  depressed  me.  With 
a  foolish  notion  that  the  Middle  West  should  take  a  mod 
erate  degree  of  pride  in  me,  I  resented  this  condemnation. 
"Am  I  not  making  in  my  small  way  the  same  sort  of  histori 
cal  record  of  the  west  that  Whittier  and  Holmes  secured 
for  New  England?"  I  asked  my  friends.  "Am  I  not  worthy 
of  an  occasional  friendly  word,  a  message  of  encourage 
ment?" 

Of  course  I  should  have  risen  superior  to  these  local 
misjudgments,  and  in  fact  I  did  keep  to  my  work  although 
only  a  faint  voice  here  and  there  was  raised  in  my  defence. 
Even  after  Rose  had  been  introduced  to  London  by  Wil 
liam  Stead,  and  Henry  James  and  Israel  Zangwill  and 
James  Barrie  had  all  written  in  praise  of  her,  the  editors 
of  the  western  papers  still  maintained  a  consistently  mili 
tant  attitude.  Perhaps  I  should  have  taken  comfort  from 
the  fact  that  they  considered  me  worth  assaulting,  but 
that  kind  of  comfort  is  rather  bleak  at  its  best,  especially 
when  the  sales  of  your  book  are  so  small  as  to  be  con 
firmatory  of  the  critic. 

Without  doubt  this  persistent  antagonism,  this  almost 
universal  depreciation  of  my  stories  of  the  plains  had  some 
thing  to  do  with  intensifying  the  joy  with  which  I  returned 

28 


In    the    Footsteps    of    General    Grant 

to  the  mountain  world  and  its  heroic  types,  at  any  rate  I 
spent  July  and  August  of  that  year  in  Colorado  and  New 
Mexico,  making  many  observations,  which  turned  out  to 
have  incalculable  value  to  me  in  later  days.  From  a  round 
up  in  the  Current  Creek  country  I  sauntered  down  through 
Salida,  Ouray,  Telluride,  Durango  and  the  Ute  Reservation, 
a  circuit  which  filled  my  mind  with  noble  suggestions  for 
stories  and  poems,  a  tour  which  profoundly  influenced  my 
life  as  well  as  my  writing. 

The  little  morocco-covered  notebook  in  which  I  set  down 
some  of  my  impressions  is  before  me  as  I  write.  It  still 
vibrates  with  the  ecstasy  of  that  enthusiasm.  Sentences  like 
these  are  frequent.  "From  the  dry  hot  plains,  across  the 
blazing  purple  of  the  mesa's  edge,  I  look  away  to  where 
the  white  clouds  soar  in  majesty  above  the  serrate  crest  of 
Uncomphagre.  Oh,  the  splendor  and  mystery  of  those 
cloud-hid  regions!  ...  A  coyote,  brown  and  dry  and  hot 
as  any  tuft  of  desert  grass  drifts  by.  .  .  .  Into  the  coolness 
and  sweetness  and  cloud-glory  of  this  marvelous  land.  .  .  . 
Gorgeous  shadows  are  in  motion  on  White  House  Peak. 
.  .  .  Along  the  trail  as  though  walking  a  taut  wire,  a  cara 
van  of  burros  streams,  driven  by  a  wide-hatted  graceful 
horseman.  .  .  .  Twelve  thousand  feet!  I  am  brother  to 
the  eagles  now!  The  matchless  streams,  the  vivid  orange- 
colored  meadows.  The  deep  surf-like  roar  of  the  firs,  the 
wailing  sigh  of  the  wind  in  the  grass — a  passionate  longing 
wind."  Such  are  my  jottings. 

In  these  pages  I  can  now  detect  the  beginnings  of  a 
dozen  of  my  stories,  a  score  of  my  poems.  No  other  of  my 
trips  was  ever  so  inspirational. 

Not  content  with  the  wonders  of  Colorado  I  drifted  down 
to  Santa  Fe  and  Isleta,  with  Charles  Francis  Browne  and 
Hermon  MacNeill,  and  got  finally  to  Holbrook,  where  we 
outfitted  and  rode  away  across  the  desert,  bound  for  the 

29 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

Snake  Dance  at  Walpi.  It  would  seem  that  we  had  decided 
to  share  all  there  was  of  romance  in  the  South  West.  They 
were  as  insatiate  as  I. 

For  a  week  we  lived  on  the  mesa  at  Walpi  in  the  house 
of  Heli.  Aided  by  Dr.  Fewkes  of  Washington,  we  saw  most 
of  the  phases  of  the  snake  ceremonies.  The  doctor  and  his 
own  men  were  camped  at  the  foot  of  the  mesa,  making  a 
special  study  of  the  Hopi  and  their  history.  Remote,  in 
credibly  remote  it  all  seemed  even  at  that  time,  and  some 
of  that  charm  I  put  into  an  account  of  it  which  Harper's 
published — one  of  the  earliest  popular  accounts  of  the 
Snake  Dance. 

One  night  as  I  was  standing  on  the  edge  of  the  cliff  look 
ing  out  over  the  sand  to  the  west,  I  saw  a  train  of  pack 
horses  moving  toward  Walpi  like  a  jointed,  canvas-colored 
worm.  It  was  the  outfit  of  another  party  of  "tourists" 
coming  to  the  dance,  and  half  an  hour  later  a  tall,  lean, 
brown  and  smiling  man  of  middle  life  rode  up  the  eastern 
trail  at  the  head  of  his  train. 

Greeting  me  pleasantly  he  asked,  "Has  the  ceremony 
begun?" 

"The  snakes  are  in  process  of  being  gathered,"  I  replied, 
"but  you  are  in  time  for  the  most  interesting  part  of  the 
festival." 

In  response  to  a  question  he  explained,  "I've  been  study 
ing  the  Cliff-Dwellings  of  the  Mesa  Verde.  My  name  is 
Pruden.  I  am  from  New  York." 

It  was  evident  that  "The  Doctor"  (as  his  guides  called 
him)  was  not  only  a  man  of  wide  experience  on  the  trail, 
but  a  scientist  as  well,  and  I  found  him  most  congenial. 

We  spent  the  evening  together,  and  together  we  wit 
nessed  the  mysterious  snake  dance  which  the  natives  of 
Walpi  give  every  other  year— a  ceremony  so  incredibly 
primitive  that  it  carried  me  back  into  the  stone  age,  and 

30 


In    the    Footsteps    of    General    Grant 

three  days  later  (leaving  Browne  and  MacNeill  to  paint 
and  sculpture  the  Hopi)  we  went  to  Zuni  and  Acoma  and 
at  last  to  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado,  a  trip  which 
laid  upon  my  mind  a  thousand  glorious  impressions  of 
the  desert  and  its  life.  It  was  so  beautiful,  so  marvelous 
that  sand  and  flies  and  hunger  and  thirst  were  forgotten. 

Aside  from  its  esthetic  delight,  this  summer  turned  out 
to  be  the  most  profitable  season  of  my  whole  career.  It 
marks  a  complete  'bout  face  in  my  march.  Coming  just 
after  Rose  of  Butcher's  Coolly,  it  dates  the  close  of  my 
prairie  £ales  and  the  beginning  of  a  long  series  of  mountain 
stories.  Cripple  Creek  and  the  Current  Creek  country 
suggested  The  Eagle's  Heart,  Witches1  Gold,  Money  Magic, 
and  a  dozen  shorter  romances.  In  truth  every  page  of  my 
work  thereafter  was  colored  by  the  experiences  of  this 
glorious  savage  splendid  summer. 

The  reasons  are  easy  to  define.  All  my  emotional  rela 
tionships  with  the  "High  Country"  were  pleasant,  my  sense 
of  responsibility  was  less  keen,  hence  the  notes  of  resent 
ment,  of  opposition  to  unjust  social  conditions  which  had 
made  my  other  books  an  offense  to  my  readers  were  almost 
entirely  absent  in  my  studies  of  the  mountaineers.  My  pity 
was  less  challenged  in  their  case.  Lonely  as  their  lives 
were,  it  was  not  a  sordid  loneliness.  The  cattle  rancher  was 
at  least  not  a  drudge.  Careless,  slovenly  and  wasteful  as 
I  knew  him  to  be,  he  was  not  mean.  He  had  something  of 
the  Centaur  in  his  bearing.  Marvelous  horsemanship  dig 
nified  his  lean  figure  and  lent  a  notable  grace  to  his  ges 
tures.  His  speech  was  picturesque  and  his  observations 
covered  a  wide  area.  Self-reliant,  fearless,  instant  of  ac 
tion  in  emergency,  his  character  appealed  to  me  with  ever- 
increasing  power. 

I  will  not  say  that  I  consciously  and  deliberately  cut  my 
self  off  from  my  prairie  material,  the  desertion  came  about 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

naturally.  Swiftly,  inevitably,  the  unplowed  valleys,  the 
waterless  foothills  and  the  high  peaks,  inspired  me,  filled 
me  with  desire  to  embody  them  in  some  form  of  prose,  of 
verse. 

Laden  with  a  myriad  impressions  of  Indians,  mountaineers 
and  miners,  I  returned  to  my  home  as  a  bee  to  its  hive, 
and  there,  during  October,  in  my  quiet  chamber  worked 
fast  and  fervently  to  transform  my  rough  notes  into  fiction. 
Making  no  attempt  to  depict  the  West  as  some  one  else 
had  seen  it,  or  might  thereafter  see  it,  I  wrote  of  it  precisely 
as  it  appeared  to  me,  verifying  every  experience,  for,  al 
though  I  had  not  lingered  long  in  any  one  place — a  few 
weeks  at  most — I  had  observed  closely  and  my  impressions 
were  clearly  and  deeply  graved. 

In  fear  of  losing  that  freshness  of  delight,  that  emotion 
which  gave  me  inspiration,  I  had  made  copious  notes  while 
in  the  field  and  although  I  seldom  referred  to  them  after  I 
reached  my  desk,  the  very  act  of  putting  them  down  had 
helped  to  organize  and  fix  them  in  my  mind. 

All  of  September  and  October  was  spent  at  the  Home 
stead.  Each  morning  I  worked  at  my  writing,  and  in  the 
afternoon  I  drove  my  mother  about  the  country  or  wrought 
some  improvement  to  the  place. 

In  the  midst  of  these  new  literary  enthusiasms  I  received 
a  message  which  had  a  most  disturbing  effect  on  my  plans. 
It  was  a  letter  from  Sam  McClure  whose  new  little  magazine 
was  beginning  to  show  astonishing  vitality.  "I  want  you 
to  write  for  me  a  life  of  Ulysses  Grant.  I  want  it  to  follow 
Ida  TarbelPs  Lincoln  which  is  now  nearing  an  end.  Come 
to  New  York  and  talk  it  over." 

This  request  arrested  me  in  my  fictional  progress.  I 
was  tempted  to  accept  this  commission,  not  merely  because 
of  the  editor's  generous  terms  of  payment  but  for  the  deeper 

32 


In    the    Footsteps    of    General    Grant 

reason  that  Grant  was  a  word  of  epic  significance  in  my 
mind.  From  the  time  when  I  was  three  years  of  age,  this 
great  name  had  rung  in  my  ears  like  the  sound  of  a  mellow 
bell.  I  knew  I  could  write  Grant's  story — but — I  hesi 
tated. 

"It  is  a  mighty  theme,"  I  replied,  "and  yet  I  am  not  sure 
that  I  ought  to  give  so  much  of  my  time  at  this,  the  most 
creative  period  of  my  life.  It  may  change  the  whole 
current  of  my  imagination." 

My  father,  whose  attitude  toward  the  great  Commander 
held  much  of  hero-worship  and  who  had  influenced  my 
childish  thinking,  influenced  me  now,  but  aside  from  his 
instruction  I  had  come  to  consider  Grant's  career  more 
marvelous  than  that  of  any  other  American  both  by  reason 
of  its  wide  arc  of  experience  and  its  violent  dramatic  con 
trasts.  It  lent  itself  to  epic  treatment.  With  a  feeling 
that  if  I  could  put  this  deeply  significant  and  distinctively 
American  story  into  a  readable  volume,  I  should  be  adding 
something  to  American  literature  as  well  as  to  my  own 
life,  I  consented.  Dropping  my  fictional  plans  for  the 
time  I  became  the  historian. 

In  order  to  make  the  biography  a  study  from  first-hand 
material  I  planned  a  series  of  inspirational  trips  which 
filled  in  a  large  part  of  '96.,  Beginning  at  Georgetown,  Ohio, 
where  I  found  several  of  Grant's  boyhood  playmates,  I 
visited  Ripley,  where  he  went  to  school,  and  then  at  the 
Academy  at  West  Point  I  spent  several  days  examining 
the  records.  In  addition,  I  went  to  each  of  the  barracks 
at  which  young  Grant  had  been  stationed.  Sacketts  Har 
bor,  Detroit  and  St.  Louis  yielded  their  traditions.  A  month 
in  Mexico  enabled  me  to  trace  out  on  foot  not  only  the 
battle  grounds  of  Monterey,  but  that  of  Vera  Cruz,  Puebla 
and  Molina  del  Rey.  No  spot  on  which  Grant  had  lived 
long  enough  to  leave  a  definite  impression  was  neglected, 

33 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

In  this  work  I  had  the  support  of  William  Dean  Howells 
who  insisted  on  my  doing  the  book  bravely. 

In  pursuit  of  material  concerning  Grant's  later  life  I  in 
terviewed  scores  of  his  old  neighbors  in  Springfield  and 
Galena,  and  in  pursuit  of  his  classmates,  men  like  Buckner 
and  Longstreet  and  Wright  and  Franklin,  I  took  long 
journeys.  In  short  I  spared  no  pains  to  give  my  material 
a  first-hand  quality,  and  in  doing  this  I  traveled  nearly 
thirty  thousand  miles,  making  many  interesting  acquain 
tances,  in  more  than  half  the  states  of  the  Union. 

During  all  these  activities,  however,  the  old  Wisconsin 
farmhouse  remained  my  pivot.  In  my  intervals  of  rest  I 
returned  to  my  study  and  made  notes  of  the  vividly  con 
trasting  scenes  through  which  I  had  passed.  Orizaba  and 
Jalapa,  Perote  with  its  snowy  mountains  rising  above  hot, 
cactus-covered  plains,  and  Mexico  City  became  almost 
dream-like  by  contrast  with  the  placid  beauty  of  Neshonoc. 
Some  of  my  experiences,  like  "the  Passion  Play  at  Coyo- 
can,"  for  example,  took  on  a  medieval  quality,  so  incredibly 
remote  was  its  scene, — and  yet,  despite  all  this  travel,  not 
withstanding  my  study  of  cities  and  soldiers  and  battle 
maps,  I  could  not  forget  to  lay  out  my  garden.  I  kept 
my  mother  supplied  with  all  the  necessaries  and  a  few  of 
the  luxuries  of  life. 

In  my  note  book  of  that  time  I  find  these  lines:  "I  have 
a  feeling  of  swift  change  in  art  -and  literature  here  in 
America.  This  latest  trip  to  New  York  has  shocked  and 
saddened  me.  To  watch  the  struggle,  to  feel  the  bitterness 
and  intolerance  of  the  various  groups — to  find  one  clique 
of  artists  set  against  another,  to  know  that  most  of  those 
who  come  here  will  fail  and  die — is  appalling.  The  City 
is  filled  with  strugglers,  students  of  art,  ambitious  poets, 
journalists,  novelists,  writers  of  all  kinds — I  meet  them  at 
the  clubs — some  of  them  will  be  the  large  figures  of  1900, 

34 


In    the    Footsteps    of    General    Grant 

most  of  them  will  have  fallen  under  the  wheel — This  bitter 
war  of  Realists  and  Romanticists  will  be  the  jest  of  those  • 
who  come  after  us,  and  they  in  their  turn  will  be  full  of 
battle  ardor  with  other  cries  and  other  banners.  How  is 
it  possible  to  make  much  account  of  the  cries  and  banners 
of  to-day  when  I  know  they  will  be  forgotten  of  all  but  the 
students  of  literary  history?" 

My  contract  with  McClure's  called  for  an  advance  of 
fifty  dollars  a  week  (more  money  than  I  had  ever  hoped  to 
earn)  and  with  this  in  prospect  I  purchased  a  new  set  of 
dinner  china  and  a  piano,  which  filled  my  mother's  heart 
with  delight.  As  I  thought  of  her  living  long  weeks  in  the 
old  homestead  with  only  my  invalid  aunt  for  company  my 
conscience  troubled  me,  and  as  it  was  necessary  for  me 
to  go  to  Washington  to  complete  my  history,  I  attempted 
to  mitigate  her  loneliness  by  buying  a  talking  machine, 
through  which  I  was  able  send  her  messages  and  songs.  She 
considered  these  wax  cylinders  a  poor  substitute  for  my 
actual  voice,  but  she  get  some  entertainment  from  them 
by  setting  the  machine  going  for  the  amazement  of  her 
callers. 

November  saw  me  settled  in  Washington,  hard  at  work 
on  my  history,  but  all  the  time  my  mind  was  working,  al 
most  unconsciously,  on  my  new  fictional  problems,  "After 
all,  I  am  a  novelist,"  I  wrote  to  Fuller,  fand  I  found  time 
even  in  the  midst  of  my  Historical  study  to  compose  an 
occasional  short  story  of  Colorado  or  Mexico. 

Magazine  editors  were  entirely  hospitable  to  me  now,    • 
for  my  tales  of  the  Indian  and  the  miner  had  created  a 
friendlier  spirit  among  their  readers.    My  later  themes  were,    • 
happily,  quite  outside  the  controversial  belt.     Concerned  If 
less  with  the  hopeless  drudgery,  and  more  with  the  epic  (/ 
side  of  western  life,  I  found  myself  almost  popular.     My  / 
critics,  once  off  their  guard,  were  able  to  praise,  cautiously  * 

35 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

it  is  true,  but  to  praise.  Some  of  them  assured  me  with 
paternal  gravity  that  I  might,  by  following  their  suggestions 
become  a  happy  and  moderately  successful  writer,  and 
this  prosperity,  you  may  be  sure,  was  reflected  to  some 
degree  in  the  dining  room  of  the  old  Homestead. 

My  father,  though  glad  of  the  shelter  of  the  Wisconsin 
hills  in  winter,  was  too  vigorous, — far  too  vigorous — to  be 
confined  to  the  limits  of  a  four-acre  garden  patch,  and  when 
I  urged  him  to  join  me  in  buying  one  of  the  fine  level  farms 
in  our  valley  he  agreed,  but  added  "I  must  sell  my  Dakota 
land  first." 

With  this  I  was  forced  to  be  content.  Though  sixty 
years  old  he  still  steered  the  six-horse  header  in  harvest 
time,  tireless  and  unsubdued.  Times  were  improving 
slowly,  very  slowly  in  Dakota  but  opportunities  for  selling 
his  land  were  still  remote.  He  was  not  willing  to  make 
the  necessary  sacrifices.  "I  will  not  give  it  away,"  he 
grimly  declared. 

My  return  to  the  Homestead  during  the  winter  holidays 
brought  many  unforgettable  experiences.  Memories  of  those 
winter  mornings  come  back  to  me — sunrises  with  steel-blue 
shadows  lying  along  the  drifts,  whilst  every  weed,  every 
shrub,  feathered  with  frost,  is  lit  with  subtlest  fire  and  the 
hills  rise  out  of  the  mist,  domes  of  brilliant-blue  and  burn 
ing  silver.  Splashes  of  red-gold  fill  all  the  fields,  and  small 
birds,  flying  amid  the  rimy  foliage,  shake  sparkles  of  fire 
from  their  careless  wings. 

It  was  the  antithesis  of  Indian  summer,  and  yet  it  had 
something  of  the  same  dream-like  quality.  Its  beauty  was 
more  poignant.  The  rounded  tops  of  the  red-oaks  seemed  to 
float  in  the  sparkling  air  in  which  millions  of  sun-lit  frost 
flakes  glittered.  All  forms  and  lines  were  softened  by  this 
falling  veil,  and  the  world  so  adorned,  so  transfigured  filled 

36 


In  the  Footsteps  of  General  Grant 

the  heart  with  a  keen  regret,  a  sense  of  pity  that  such  a 
world  should  pass. 

At  such  times  I  was  glad  of  my  new  home,  and  my  mother 
found  in  me  only  the  confident  and  hopeful  son.  My  doubts 
of  the  future,  my  discouragements  of  the  present  I  care 
fully  concealed. 


CHAPTER  FOUR 
Red     Men     and     Buffalo 

ALTHOUGH  my  Ulysses  Grant,  His  Life  and  Char 
acter  absorbed  most  of  my  time  and  the  larger  part 
of  my  energy  during  two  years,  I  continued  to  dream  (in 
my  hours  of  leisure),  of  the  "High  Country"  whose  splen 
dors  of  cloud  and  peak,  combined  with  the  broad-cast  do 
ings  of  the  cattleman  and  miner,  had  aroused  my  enthusi 
asm.  The  heroic  types,  both  white  and  red,  which  the  trail 
has  fashioned  to  its  needs  continued  to  allure  me,  and  when 
in  June,  '97,  my  brother,  on  his  vacation,  met  me  again 
at  West  Salem,  I  outlined  a  tour  which  should  begin  with 
a  study  of  the  Sioux  at  Standing  Rock  and  end  with  Seattle 
and  the  Pacific  Ocean.  "I  must  know  the  North-west," 
I  said  to  him. 

In  order  to  report  properly  to  any  army  post,  I  had  in 
my  pocket  a  letter  from  General  Miles  which  commended 
me  to  all  agents  and  officers,  and  with  this  as  passport  I 
was  in  the  middle  of  getting  my  equipment  in  order  when 
Ernest  Thompson  Seton  and  his  wife  surprised  me  by 
dropping  off  the  train  one  morning  late  in  the  month.  They 
too,  were  on  their  way  to  the  Rockies,  and  in  radiant  holi 
day  humor. 

My  first  meeting  with  Seton  had  been  in  New  York  at 
a  luncheon  given  for  James  Barrie  only  a  few  months  before, 
but  we  had  formed  one  of  those  instantaneous  friendships 
which  spring  from  the  possession  of  many  identical  inter 
ests.  His  skill  as  an  illustrator  and  his  knowledge  of  wild 

38 


Red    Men    and    Buffalo 

animals  had  gained  my  admiration  but  I  now  learned  that 
he  knew  certain  phases  of  the  West  better  than  I,  for 
though  of  English  birth  he  had  lived  in  Manitoba  for 
several  years.  We  were  of  the  same  age  also,  and  this 
was  another  bond  of  sympathy. 

He  asked  me  to  accompany  him  on  his  tour  of  the  Yel 
lowstone  but  as  I  had  already  arranged  for  a  study  of  the 
Sioux,  and  as  his  own  plans  were  equally  definite,  we 
reluctantly  gave  up  all  idea  of  camping  together,  but  agreed 
to  meet  in  New  York  City  in  October  to  compare  notes. 

The  following  week,  on  the  first  day  of  July,  my  brother 
and  I  were  in  Bismark,  North  Dakota,  on  our  way  to  the 
Standing  Rock  Reservation  to  witness  the  "White  Men's 
Big  Sunday,"  as  the  red  people  were  accustomed  to  call 
the  Fourth  of  July. 

It  chanced  to  be.  a  cool,  sweet,  jocund  morning,  and  as 
we  drove  away,  in  an  open  buggy,  over  the  treeless  prairie 
swells  toward  the  agency  some  sixty  miles  to  the  south,  I 
experienced  a  sense  of  elation,  a  joy  of  life,  a  thrill  of 
expectancy,  which  promised  well  for  fiction.  I  knew  the 
signs. 

There  was  little  settlement  of  any  kind  for  twenty  miles, 
but  after  we  crossed  the  Cannonball  River  we  entered 
upon  the  unviolated,  primeval  sod  of  the  red  hunter. 
Conical  lodges  were  grouped  along  the  streams.  Horsemen 
with  floating  feathers  and  beaded  buck-skin  shirts  over-took 
us  riding  like  scouts,  and  when  on  the  second  morning  we 
topped  the  final  hill  and  saw  the  agency  out-spread  below 
us  on  the  river  bank,  with  hundreds  of  canvas  tepees  set 
in  a  wide  circle  behind  it,  our  satisfaction  was  complete. 
Thousands  of  Sioux,  men,  women,  and  children  could  be 
seen  moving  about  the  teepees,  while  platoons  of  mounted 
warriors  swept  like  scouting  war  parties  across  the  plain. 
I  congratulated  myself  on  having  reached  this  famous  agency 

39 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

while  yet  its  festival  held  something  tribal  and  primitive. 

After  reporting  to  the  Commander  at  Fort  Yates,  and 
calling  upon  the  Agent  in  his  office,  we  took  lodgings  at  a 
little  half-breed  boarding  house  near  the  store,  and  ate  our 
dinner  at  a  table  where  full-bloods,  half-bloods  and  squaw 
men  were  the  other  guests. 

Every  waking  hour  thereafter  we  spent  in  observation  of 
the  people.  With  an  interpreter  to  aid  me  I  conversed 
with  the  head  men  and  inquired  into  their  history.  The 
sign-talkers,  sitting  in  the  shade  of  a  lodge  or  wagon-top, 
depicting  with  silent  grace  the  stirring  tales  of  their  youth, 
were  absorbingly  interesting.  I  spent  hours  watching  the 
play  of  their  expressive  hands. 

The  nonchalant  cow-boys  riding  about  the  camp,  the 
somber  squaw-men  (attended  by  their  blanketed  wives 
and  groups  of  wistful  half-breed  children),  and  the  ragged 
old  medicine  men  all  in  their  several  ways  made  up  a  mar 
velous  scene,  rich  with  survivals  of  pioneer  life. 

The  Gall  and  the  Sitting  Bull  were  both  dead,  but  Rain- 
in-the-Face  (made  famous  by  Longfellow)  was  alive,  very 
much  alive,  though  a  cripple.  We  met  him  several  times 
riding  at  ease  (his  crutch  tied  to  his  saddle),  a  genial,  hand 
some,  dark-complexioned  man  of  middle  age,  with  whom 
it  was  hard  to  associate  the  acts  of  ferocity  with  which  he 
was  charged. 

My  letter  of  introduction  from  General  Miles  not  only 
made  me  welcome  at  the  Fort,  it  authorized  me  to  examine 
the  early  records  of  the  Agency,  and  these  I  carefully  read 
in  search  of  material  concerning  the  Sitting  Bull. 

In  those  dingy,  brief,  bald  lines  of  record,  I  discovered 
official  evidence  of  this  chief's  supremacy  long  before  the 
Custer  battle.  As  early  as  1870  he  was  set  down  as  one 
of  the  "irreconcilables,"  and  in  1874  the  Sioux  most 
dreaded  by  the  whites  was  "Sitting  Bull's  Band."  To  Sit- 

40 


Red    Men    and    Buffalo 

ting  Bull  all  couriers  were  sent,  and  the  brief  official  ac 
counts  of  their  meetings  with  him  were  highly  dramatic 
and  sometimes  humorous. 

He  was  a  red  man,  and  proud  of  it.  He  believed  in  re 
maining  as  he  was  created.  "The  great  spirit  made  me 
red,  and  red  I  am  satisfied  to  remain,"  he  declared.  "All 
my  people  ask  is  to  be  let  alone,  to  hunt  the  buffalo,  and  to 
live  the  life  of  our  fathers" —  and  in  this  he  had  the  sym 
pathy  of  many  white  men  even  of  his  day. 

(In  the  final  count  this  chieftain,  for  the  reason  that 
he  kept  the  red  man's  point  of  view,  will  outlive  the  op 
portunists  who  truckled  to  the  white  man's  power.  He  will 
stand  as  a  typical  Sioux.) 

Our  days  at  the  Agency  passed  so  swiftly,  so  pleasantly 
that  we  would  have  lingered  on  indefinitely  had  not  the 
report  of  an  "outbreak"  among  the  northern  Cheyennes 
aroused  a  more  intense  interest.  In  the  hope  of  seeing 
something  of  this  uprising  I  insisted  on  hurriedly  returning 
to  Bismark,  where  we  took  the  earliest  possible  train  for 
Custer  City,  Montana. 

At  that  strange  little  cow-town  my  brother  hired  a  man 
to  drive  us  to  Fort  Custer,  some  forty  or  fifty  miles  to  the 
south,  a  ride  which  carried  us  deep  into  a  wild  and  beauti 
ful  land,  a  country  almost  untouched  of  man,  and  when, 
toward  sun-set,  we  came  in  sight  of  the  high  bluff  which 
stands  at  the  confluence  of  the  Big  Horn  and  the  Little  Big 
Horn  rivers,  the  fort,  the  ferry,  the  stream  were  a  picture 
by  Catlin  or  a  glorious  illustration  in  a  romance  of  the 
Border.  It  was  easy  to  imagine  ourselves  back  in  the  stir 
ring  days  of  Sitting  Bull  and  Roman  Nose. 

The  commander  of  the  Garrison,  Colonel  Anderson,  a 
fine  soldierly  figure,  welcomed  us  courteously  and  turned 
us  over  to  Lieutenant  Aherne,  a  hospitable  young  Irishman 
who  invited  us  to  spend  the  night  in  his  quarters.  It  hap- 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

pened  most  opportunely  that  he  was  serving  as  Inspector  of 
the  meat  issue  at  the  Crow  Agency,  and  on  the  following 
day  we  accompanied  him  on  his  detail,  a  deeply  instructive 
experience,  for,  at  night  we  attended  a  ceremonial  social 
dance  given  by  the  Crows  in  honor  of  Chief  Two  Moon,  a 
visiting  Cheyenne. 

Two  Moon,  a  handsome  broad-shouldered  man  of  fifty, 
met  us  at  the  door  of  the  Dance  Lodge,  welcomed  us  with 
courtly  grace,  and  gave  us  seats  beside  him  on  the  honor 
side  of  the  circle.  It  appeared  that  he  was  master  of  cere 
monies,  and  under  his  direction  the  dancing  proceeded  with 
such  dramatic  grace  and  skill  that  we  needed  very  little 
help  to  understand  its  action. 

In  groups  of  eight,  in  perfect  order,  the  young  men  rose 
from  their  seats,  advanced  to  the  center  of  the  circle,  and 
there  reenacted  by  means  of  signs,  attitudes  and  groupings, 
various  notable  personal  or  tribal  achievements  of  the  past. 
With  stealthy,  silent  stride  this  one  delineated  the  exploit 
of  some  ancestral  chief,  who  had  darted  forth  alone  on  a 
solitary  scouting  expedition.  Others  depicted  the  enemy, 
representing  his  detection  and  his  capture.  A  third  band 
arose,  and  trailing  the  hero  spy,  swiftly,  silently,  discovered 
the  captors,  attacked  and  defeated  them  and  with  trium 
phant  shouts  released  the  captive  and  brought  him  to  camp 
— all  in  perfect  unison  with  the  singers  at  the  drum  whose 
varying  rhythm  set  the  pace  for  each  especial  episode,  al 
most  as  precisely  as  a  Chinese  orchestra  augments  or  di 
minishes  the  action  on  the  stage. 

To  me  this  was  a  thrilling  glimpse  into  prehistoric 
America,  for  these  young  men,  stripped  of  their  tainted 
white-man  rags,  were  wholly  admirable,  painted  lithe-limbed 
warriors,  rejoicing  once  again  in  the  light  of  their  ancestral 
moons.  On  every  face  was  a  look  like  that  of  a  captive 
leopard,  dreaming  of  far-seen,  familiar  sands.  The  present 
was  forgot,  the  past  was  momentarily  restored. 

42 


Red    Men    and    Buffalo 

At  midnight  we  went  away  but  the  strangely-moving  beat 
of  that  barbaric  drum  was  still  throbbing  in  my  ears  as 
I  fell  asleep. 


Early  the  following  morning,  eager  to  reach  the  scene  of 
the  Cheyenne  outbreak  we  hired  saddle  horses  and  rode 
away  directly  across  the  Custer  battle  field  on  our  way 
toward  Lame  Deer,  where  we  were  told  the  troops  were 
still  in  camp  to  protect  the  agency. 

What  a  ride  that  was!  Our  trail  led  us  beyond  the  plow 
and  the  wagon  wheel,  far  into  the  midst  of  hills  where 
herds  of  cattle  were  feeding  as  the  bison  had  fed  for 
countless  ages.  Every  valley  had  its  story,  for  here  the  last 
battles  of  the  Cheyennes  had  taken  place.  I  had  over 
taken  the  passing  world  of  the  red  nomad. 

We  stopped  that  night  at  a  ranch  about  half  way  across 
the  range,  and  in  its  cabin  I  listened  while  the  cattlemen 
expressed  their  hatred  of  the  Cheyenne.  The  violence  of 
their  antagonism,  their  shameless  greed  for  the  red  man's 
land  revealed  to  me  once  and  for  all  the  fomenting  spirit 
of  each  of  the  Indian  Wars  which  had  accompanied  the 
exterminating,  century-long  march  of  our  invading  race. 
In  a  single  sentence  these  men  expressed  the  ruthless  creed 
of  the  land-seeker.  "We  intend  to  wipe  these  red  sons-of- 
dogs  from  the  face  of  the  earth."  Here  was  displayed 
shamelessly  the  seamy  side  of  western  settlement. 

At  about  ten  o'clock  next  morning  we  topped  the  scan 
tily-timbered  ridge  which  walls  in  the  Lame  Deer  Agency, 
and  looked  down  upon  the  tents  of  the  troops.  A  company 
of  cavalry  drilling  on  the  open  field  to  the  north  gave 
evidence  of  active  service,  and  as  I  studied  the  mingled 
huts  and  tepees  of  the  village,  I  realized  that  I  had  arrived 
in  time  to  witness  some  part  of  the  latest  staging  of  the 
red  man's  final\tand. 

43 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

Reporting  at  once  to  the  agent,  Major  George  Stouch,  I 
found  him  to  be  a  veteran  officer  of  the  regular  army  "On 
Special  Duty,"  a  middle-aged,  pleasant-faced  man  of  unas 
suming  dignity  whose  crooked  wrist  (caused  by  a  bullet 
in  the  Civil  War)  gave  him  a  touch  of  awkwardness;  but 
his  eyes  were  keen,  and  his  voice  clear  and  decisive. 

"The  plans  of  the  cattlemen  have  been  momentarily 
checked,"  he  said,  "but  they  are  still  bitter,  and  a  single 
pistol-shot  may  bring  renewed  trouble.  The  Cheyennes, 
as  you  know,  are  warriors." 

He  introduced  me  to  Captain  Cooper,  in  command  of  the 
troopers,  and  to  Captain  Reed,  Commander  of  the  Infantry, 
who  invited  us  to  join  his  mess,  an  invitation  which  we 
gladly  accepted. 

Cooper  was  a  soldier  of  wide  experience,  a  veteran  of 
the  Civil  War,  and  an  Indian  fighter  of  distinction.  But 
his  Lieutenant,  a  handsome  young  West  Pointer  named 
Livermore,  interested  me  still  more  keenly,  for  he  was  a 
student  of  the  sign  language  and  had  been  at  one  time  in 
command  of  an  experimental  troop  of  red  "rookies."  Like 
Major  Stouch  he  was  a  broad-minded  friend  of  all  primitive 
peoples,  and  his  experiences  and  stories  were  of  the  greatest 
value  to  me. 

With  the  aid  of  Major  Stouch  I  won  the  confidence  of 
White  Bull,  Two  Moon,  Porcupine,  American  Horse  and 
other  of  the  principal  Cheyennes,  and  one  of  the  Agency 
policemen,  a  fine  fellow  called  Wolf  Voice,  became  my 
interpreter.  Though  half-Cheyenne  and  half-Assiniboin, 
he  spoke  English  well,  and  manifested  a  marked  sense  of 
humor.  He  had  served  one  summer  as  guide  to  Frederick 
Remington,  and  had  some  capital  stories  concerning  him. 
"Remington  fat  man — too  heavy  on  pony.  Him  'fraid 
Injuns  sure  catch  him,"  he  said  with  a  chuckle.  "Him  all- 
time  carry  box — take  pictures.  Him  no  warrior." 

44 


Red    Men    and    Buffalo 

For  two  weeks  I  absorbed  "material"  at  every  pore,  care 
less  of  other  duties,  thinking  only  of  this  world,  avid  for 
the  truth,  yet  selecting  my  facts  as  every  artist  must,  until, 
at  last,  measurably  content  I  announced  my  intention  to 
return  to  the  railway.  "We  have  tickets  to  Seattle,"  I  said 
to  Stouch,  "and  we  must  make  use  of  them." 

"I'm  sorry  to  have  you  go,"  he  replied,  "but  if  you  must 
go  I'll  send  Wolf  Voice  with  you  as  far  as  Custer." 

We  had  no  real  need  of  a  guide  but  I  was  glad  to  have 
Wolf  Voice  riding  with  me,  for  I  had  grown  to  like  him 
and  welcomed  any  opportunity  for  conversing  with  him. 
He  was  one  of  the  few  full-bloods  who  could  speak  English 
well  enough  to  enjoy  a  joke. 

As  we  were  passing  his  little  cabin,  just  at  the  edge  of  the 
Agency,  he  said,  "Wait,  I  get  you  somesing." 

In  a  few  moments  he  returned,  carrying  a  long  eagle 
feather  in  his  hand.  This  he  handed  to  me,  saying,  "My 
little  boy — him  dead.  Him  carry  in  dance  dis  fedder.  You 
my  friend.  You  take  him." 

Major  Stouch  had  told  me  of  this  boy,  a  handsome  little 
fellow  of  only  five  years  of  age,  who  used  to  join  most 
soberly  and  cunningly  with  the  men  in  their  ceremonial 
dances;  and  so  when  Wolf  Voice  said,  "I  give  you  dis  fed 
der — you  my  friend.  You  Indian's  friend,"  I  was  deeply 
moved. 

"Wolf  Voice,  I  shall  keep  this  as  a  sign,  a  sign  that  we 
are  friends." 

He  pointed  toward  a  woman  crouching  over  a  fire  in  the 
corral,  "You  see  him — my  wife?  Him  cry — all  time  cry 
since  him  son  die.  Him  no  sleep  in  house.  Sleep  all  time 
in  tepee.  Me  no  sleep  in  house.  Spirit  come,  cry,  woo- 
oo-oo  in  chimney.  My  boy  spirit  come, — cry — me  'f raid  I 
My  heart  very  sore." 

The  bronze  face  of  the  big  man  was  quivering  with  emo- 

45 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

tion  as  he  spoke,  and  not  knowing  what  to  say  to  comfort 
him  I  pretended  to  haste.  "Let  us  go.  You  can  tell  me 
about  it  while  we  ride. 

As  we  set  forth  he  recovered  his  smile,  for  he  was  naturally 
of  a  cheerful  disposition,  and  in  our  long,  leisurely  journey 
I  obtained  many  curious  glimpses  into  his  psychology — 
the  psychology  of  the  red  man.  He  led  us  to  certain  shrines 
or  "medicine"  rocks  and  his  remarks  concerning  the  offer 
ings  of  cartridges,  calico,  tobacco  and  food  which  we  found 
deposited  beside  a  twisted  piece  of  lava  on  the  side  of  a 
low  hill  were  most  revealing. 

"Wolf  Voice,  do  you  believe  the  dead  come  back  to  get 
these  presents,"  I  asked. 

"No,"  he  soberly  replied.  "Spirit  no  eat  tobacco,  spirit 
eat  spirit  of  tobacco." 

His  reply  was  essentially  Oriental  in  its  philosophy.  It 
was  the  essence  of  the  offering,  the  invisible  part  which  was 
taken  by  the  invisible  dead. 

Many  other  of  his  remarks  were  almost  equally  revela 
tory.  "White  soldier  heap  fool,"  he  said.  "Stand  up  in 
rows  to  be  shot  at.  Injun  fight  running — in  bush — behind 
trees." 

We  stopped  again  at  The  Half-Way  Ranch,  and  the 
manner  in  which  the  cattlemen  treated  Wolf  Voice  angered 
me.  He  was  much  more  admirable  than  they,  and  yet  they 
would  not  allow  him  to  sleep  in  the  house. 

He  rode  all  the  way  back  to  Fort  Custer  with  us  and  when 
we  parted  I  said,  "Wolf  Voice,  I  hope  we  meet  again,"  and 
I  meant  it.  His  spirit  is  in  all  that  I  have  since  written  of 
the  red  men.  He,  Two  Moon,  American  Horse,  and  Por 
cupine  were  of  incalculable  value  to  me  in  composing  The 
Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  which  was  based  upon 
this  little  war. 

From  Billings  we  went  almost  directly  to  the  Flat  Head 

46 


Red    Men    and    Buffalo 

Reservation.  We  had  heard  that  a  herd  of  buffalo  was  to 
be  seen  in  its  native  pastures  just  west  of  Flat  Head  Lake 
and  as  I  put  more  value  on  seeing  that  herd  than  upon 
any  other  "sight"  in  the  state  of  Montana,  we  made  it 
our  next  objective. 

Outfitting  at  Jocko  we  rode  across  the  divide  to  the  St. 
Ignacio  Mission.  Less  wild  than  the  Cheyenne  reservation 
the  Flat  Head  country  was  much  more  beautiful,  and  we 
were  entirely  happy  in  our  camp  beside  the  rushing  stream 
which  came  down  from  the  Jocko  Lakes. 

"Yes,  there  is  such  a  herd,"  the  trader  said.  "It  is  owned 
by  Michel  Pablo  and  consists  of  about  two  hundred,  old 
and  young.  They  can  be  reached  by  riding  straight  north 
for  some  twenty  miles  and  then  turning  to  the  west.  You 
will  have  to  hunt  them,  however;  they  are  not  in  a  corral. 
They  are  feeding  just  as  they  used  to  do.  They  come  and 
go  as  they  happen  to  feel  the  need  of  food  or  water." 

With  these  stimulating  directions  we  set  forth  one  morn 
ing  to  "hunt  a  herd  of  buffalo,"  excited  as  a  couple  of 
boys,  eager  as  hunters  yet  with  only  the  desire  to  see  the 
wild  kine. 

After  we  left  the  road  and  turned  westward  our  way 
led  athwart  low  hills  and  snake-like  ravines  and  along  deep- 
worn  cattle  paths  leading  to  water  holes.  All  was  magnifi 
cently  primeval.  No  mark  of  plow  or  spade,  no  planted 
stake  or  post  assailed  our  eyes.  We  were  deep  in  the  land 
of  the  bison  at  last. 

Finally,  as  we  topped  a  long,  low  swell,  my  brother 
shouted,  "Buffalo!"  and  looking  where  he  pointed,  I  de 
tected  through  the  heated  haze  of  the  midday  plain,  certain 
vague,  unfamiliar  forms  which  hinted  at  the  prehistoric 
past.  They  were  not  cows  or  horses,  that  was  evident. 
Here  and  there  purple-black  bodies  loomed,  while  close 
beside  them  other  smaller  objects  gave  off  a  singular  and 

47 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

striking  contrast.  There  was  no  mistaking  the  character 
of  these  animals.  They  were  bison. 

To  ride  down  upon  them  thus,  in  the  silence  and  heat  of 
that  uninhabited  valley,  was  to  realize  in  every  detail,  a 
phase  of  the  old-time  life  of  the  plains.  We  moved  in 
silence.  The  grass-hoppers  springing  with  clapping  buzz 
before  our  horses'  feet  gave  out  the  only  sound.  No  other 
living  thing  uttered  voice.  Nothing  moved  save  our  ponies 
and  those  distant  monstrous  kine  whose  presence  filled  us 
with  the  same  emotion  which  had  burned  in  the  hearts  of 
our  pioneer  ancestors. 

As  we  drew  nearer,  clouds  of  dust  arose  like  lazy  smoke 
from  smoldering  fires,  curtains  which  concealed  some 
mighty  bull  tossing  the  powdery  earth  with  giant  hoof. 
The  cows  seeing  our  approach,  began  to  shift  and  change. 
The  bulls  did  not  hurry,  on  the  contrary,  they  fell  to  the 
rear  and  grimly  halted  our  advance.  Towers  of  alkali  dust, 
hot  and  white,  lingering  smoke-like  in  the  air  shielded  us 
like  a  screen,  and  so — slowly  riding — we  drew  near  enough 
to  perceive  the  calves  and  hear  the  mutter  of  the  cows  as 
they  reenacted  for  us  the  life  of  the  vanished  millions  of 
their  kind. 

Here  lay  a  calf  beside  its  dam.  Yonder  a  solitary  an 
cient  and  shaggy  bull  stood  apart,  sullen  and  brooding. 
Nearer  a  colossal  chieftain,  glossy,  black,  and  weighing 
two  thousand  pounds  moved  from  group  to  group,  restless 
and  combative,  wrinkling  his  ridiculously  small  nose,  and 
uttering  a  deep,  menacing,  muttering  roar.  His  rivals, 
though  they  slunk  away,  gave  utterance  to  similar  sinister 
snarls,  as  if  voicing  bitter  resentment.  They  did  not  bel 
low,  they  growled,  low  down  in  their  cavernous  throats,  like 
angry  lions.  Nothing  that  I  had  ever  heard  or  read  of 
buffaloes  had  given  me  the  quality  of  this  majestic  clamor. 

Occasionally  one  of  them,  tortured  by  flies,  dropped  to 

48 


Red    Men    and     Buffalo 

earth,  and  rolled  and  tore  the  sod,  till  a  dome  of  dust 
arose  and  hid  him.  Out  of  this  gray  curtain  he  suddenly 
reappeared,  dark  and  savage,  like  a  dun  rock  emerging 
from  mist.  One  furious  giant,  moving  with  curling  upraised 
tail,  challenged  to  universal  combat,  whilst  all  his  rivals 
gave  way,  reluctant,  resentful,  yet  afraid.  The  rumps  of 
some  of  the  veterans  were  as  bare  of  hair  as  the  loins  of 
lions,  but  their  enormous  shoulders  bulked  into  deformity 
by  reason  of  a  dense  mane.  They  moved  like  elephants — 
clumsy,  enormous,  distorted,  yet  with  astonishing  celerity. 

It  was  worth  a  long  journey  to  stand  thus  and  watch  that 
small  band  of  bison,  representatives  of  a  race  whose  myriads 
once  covered  all  America,  for  though  less  than  two  hundred 
in  number,  they  were  feeding  and  warring  precisely  as 
their  ancestors  had  fed  and  warred  for  a  million  years.  Small 
wonder  that  the  red  men  believe  the  white  invader  must 
have  used  some  evil  medicine,  some  magic  power  in  sweep 
ing  these  majestic  creatures  from  the  earth.  Once  they 
covered  the  hills  like  a  robe  of  brown,  now  only  a  few 
small  bands  are  left  to  perpetuate  the  habits  and  the  cus 
toms  of  the  past. 

As  we  watched,  they  fed,  fought,  rose  up  and  lay  down 
in  calm  disdain  of  our  presence.  It  was  as  if,  unobserved, 
and  yet  close  beside  them,  we  were  studying  the  denizens  of 
a  small  corner  of  aboriginal  America,  America  in  pre-Colum 
bian  times.  Reluctantly,  slowly  we  turned  and  rode  away, 
back  to  our  tent,  back  to  the  railway  and  the  present  day. 


On  our  return  to  Missoula  we  found  the  town  aflame  with 
a  report  that  a  steamer  had  just  landed  at  Seattle,  bring 
ing  from  Alaska  nearly  three  million  dollars  in  gold-dust, 
and  that  the  miners  who  owned  the  treasure  had  said,  "We 
dug  it  from  the  valley  of  the  Yukon,  at  a  point  called  the 

49 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

Klondike.  A  thousand  miles  from  anywhere.  The  Yukon 
is  four  thousand  miles  long,  and  flows  north,  so  that  the 
lower  half  freezes  solid  early  in  the  fall,  and  to  cross  over 
land  from  Skagway — the  way  we  came  out — means  weeks 
of  travel.  It  is  the  greatest  gold  camp  in  the  world  but 
no  one  can  go  in  now.  Everybody  must  wait  till  next  June." 

It  was  well  that  this  warning  was  plainly  uttered,  for 
the  adventurous  spirits  of  Montana  instantly  took  fire. 
Nothing  else  was  talked  of  by  the  men  on  the  street  and 
in  the  trains.  Even  my  brother  said,  "I  wish  I  could  go." 

"But  you  can't,"  I  argued.  "It  is  time  you  started  for 
New  York.  Herne  will  drop  you  if  you  don't  turn  up  for 
rehearsal  in  September." 

Reluctantly  agreeing  to  this,  he  turned  his  face  toward 
the  East  whilst  I  kept  on  toward  Seattle,  to  visit  my  class 
mate  Burton  Babcock,  who  was  living  in  a  village  on  Puget 
Sound. 

The  coast  towns  were  humming  with  mining  news  and 
mining  plans.  The  word  "Klondike"  blazed  out  on  ban 
ners,  on  shop  windows  and  on  brick  walls.  Alert  and 
thrifty  merchants  at  once  began  to  advertise  Klondike 
shoes,  Klondike  coats,  Klondike  camp  goods.  Hundreds 
of  Klondike  exploring  companies  were  being  organized. 
In  imagination  each  shop-keeper  saw  the  gold  seekers  of  the 
world  in  line  of  march,  their  faces  set  toward  Seattle  and 
the  Sound.  Every  sign  indicated  a  boom. 

This  swift  leaping  to  grasp  an  opportunity  was  charac 
teristically  American,  and  I  would  have  gladly  taken 
part  in  the  play,  but  alas!  my  Grant  history  was  still  un 
finished,  and  I  had  already  overstayed  my  vacation  limit. 
I  should  have  returned  at  once,  but  my  friend  Babcock  was 
expecting  me  to  visit  him,  and  this  I  did. 

Anacortes  (once  a  port  of  vast  pretentions),  was,  at 
this  time,  a  boom- town  in  decay,  and  Burton  whom  I  had 

50 


Red    Men    and    Buffalo 

not  seen  for  ten  years,  seemed  equally  forlorn.  After 
trying  his  hand  at  several  professions,  he  had  finally  drifted 
to  this  nlace,  and  was  living  alone  in  a  rude  cabin,  camping 
like  a  woodsman.  Being  without  special  training  in  any  • 
trade,  he  had  fallen  into  competition  with  the  lowest  kind 
of  unskilled  labor. 

Like  my  Uncle  David,  another  unsuccessful  explorer,  he 
had  grown  old  before  his  time,  and  for  a  few  minutes  I 
could  detect  in  him  nothing  of  the  lithe  youth  I  had  known 
at  school  on  the  Iowa  prairie  twenty  years  before.  Shaggy 
of  beard,  wrinkled  and  bent  he  seemed  already  an  old 
man. 

By  severest  toil  in  the  mills  and  in  the  forest  he  had 
become  the  owner  of  two  small  houses  on  a  ragged  street —    • 
these  and  a  timber  claim  on  the  Skagit  River  formed  his 
entire  fortune. 

Though  careless  of  dress  and  hard  of  hand,  his  speech 
remained  that  of  the  thinker,  and  much  of  his  reading  was 
still  along  high,  philosophical  lines.  He  had  been  a  singular 
youth,  and  he  had  developed  into  a  still  more  singular  man. 
With  an  instinctive  love  of  the  forest,  he  had  become  a 
daring  and  experienced  mountaineer.  As  he  described  to 
me  his  solitary  trips  over  the  high  Cascades  I  was  reminded 
of  John  Muir,  for  he,  too,  often  spent  weeks  in  the  high  • 
peaks  above  his  claim  with  only  such  outfit  as  he  could 
carry  on  his  back. 

"What  do  you  do  it  for?"  I  asked.  "Are  you  gold- 
hunting?" 

With  a  soft  chuckle  he  answered,  "Oh,  no;  I  do  it  just 
for  the  fun  of  it.  I  love  to  move  around  up  there,  alone, 
above  timber  line.  It's  beautiful  up  there." 

Naturally,  I  recalled  the  scenes  of  our  boyhood.  I  spoke 
of  the  Burr  Oak  Lyceums,  of  our  life  at  the  Osage  Seminary, 
and  of  the  boys  and  girls  we  had  loved,  but  he  was  not 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

disposed,  at  the  moment,  to  dwell  on  them  or  on  the  past. 
His  heart  (I  soon  discovered)  was  aflame  with  desire  to 
join  the  rush  of  gold-seekers.  "I  wish  you  would  grub 
stake  me,"  he  timidly  suggested.  "I'd  like  to  try  my  hand 
at  digging  gold  in  the  Klondike." 

"It's  too  late  in  the  season,"  I  replied.  "Wait  till  spring. 
Wait  till  I  finish  my  history  of  Grant  and  I'll  go  in  with 
you." 

With  this  arrangement  (which  on  my  part  was  more  than 
half  a  jest)  I  left  him  and  started  homeward  by  way  of 
Lake  MacDonald,  the  Blackfoot  Reservation  and  Fort 
Benton,  my  mind  teeming  with  subjects  for  poems,  short 
stories  and  novels.  My  vacation  was  over.  Aspiring 
vaguely  to  qualify  as  the  fictionist  of  this  region,  I  was 
eager  to  be  at  work.  Here  was  my  next  and  larger  field. 
As  my  neighbors  in  Iowa  and  Dakota  were  moving  on  into 
these  more  splendid  spaces,  so  now  I  resolved  to  follow 
them  and  be  their  chronicler. 

This  trip  completed  my  conversion.  I  resolved  to  pre 
empt  a  place  in  the  history  of  the  great  Northwest  which 
was  at  once  a  wilderness  and  a  cosmopolis,  for  in  it  I  found 
men  and  women  from  many  lands,  drawn  to  the  mountains 
in  search  of  health,  or  recreation,  or  gold.  I  perceived  that 
almost  any  character  I  could  imagine  could  be  verified  in 
this  amazing  mixture.  I  began  to  sketch  novels  which 
would  have  been  false  in  Wisconsin  or  Iowa.  With  a  sense 
of  elation,  of  freedom,  I  decided  to  swing  out  into  the 
wider  air  of  Colorado  and  Montana. 


CHAPTER  FIVE 
The    Telegraph    Trail 

THE  writing  of  the  last  half  of  my  Grant  biography 
demanded  a  careful  study  of  war  records,  therefore  in 
the  autumn  of  '97  I  took  lodgings  in  Washington,  and  set 
tled  to  the  task  of  reading  my  way  through  the  intrica 
cies  of  the  Grant  Administrations.  '  Until  this  work  was 
completed  I  could  not  make  another  trip  to  the  Northwest. 

The  new  Congressional  Library  now  became  my  grandiose 
work-shop.  All  through  the  winter  from  nine  till  twelve 
in  the  morning  and  from  two  till  six  in  the  afternoon,  I  sat 
at  a  big  table  in  a  special  room,  turning  the  pages  of  musty 
books  and  yellowed  newspapers,  or  dictating  to  a  stenog 
rapher  the  story  of  the  Reconstruction  Period  as  it  unfolded 
under  my  eyes.  I  was  for  the  time  entirely  the  historian, 
with  little  time  to  dream  of  the  fictive  material  with  which 
my  memory  was  filled. 

I  find  this  significant  note  in  my  diary.  "My  Grant  life 
is  now  so  nearly  complete  that  I  feel  free  to  begin  a  work 
which  I  have  long  meditated.  I  began  to  dictate,  to-day, 
the  story  of  my  life  as  boy  and  man  in  the  West.  In  view 
of  my  approaching  perilous  trip  into  the  North  I  want  to 
leave  a  fairly  accurate  chronicle  of  what  I  saw  and  what 
I  did  on  the  Middle  Border.  The  truth  is,  with  all  my  trail 
ing  about  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  I  have  never  been  in  a 
satisfying  wilderness.  It  is  impossible,  even  in  Wyoming, 
to  get  fifty  miles  from  settlement.  I  long  to  undertake  a 
journey  which  demands  hardihood,  and  so,  after  careful  in- 

53 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

vestigation,  I  have  decided  to  go  into  the  Yukon  Valley  by 
pack  train  over  the  British  Columbian  Mountains,  a  route 
which  offers  a  fine  and  characteristic  New  World  adventure." 

To  prepare  myself  for  this  expedition  I  ran  up  to  Ottawa 
in  February  to  study  maps  and  to  talk  with  Canadian  of 
ficials  concerning  the  various  trails  which  were  being  sur 
veyed  and  blazed.  "No  one  knows  much  about  that  coun 
try,"  said  Dawson  with  a  smile. 

I  returned  to  Washington  quite  determined  on  going  to 
Teslin  Lake  over  a  path  which  followed  an  abandoned  tele 
graph  survey  from  Quesnelle  on  the  Fraser  River  to  the 
Stickeen,  a  distance  estimated  at  about  eight  hundred  miles, 
and  I  quote  these  lines  as  indicating  my  mind  at  the  time: 

The  way  is  long  and  cold  and  lone— 

But  I  go! 
It  leads  where  pines  forever  moan 

Their  weight  of  snow — 

But  I  go! 

There  are  voices  in  the  wind  which  call 
There  are  shapes  which  beckon  to  the  plain- 
I  must  journey  where  the  peaks  are  tall, 
And  lonely  herons  clamor  in  the  rain. 

One  of  my  most  valued  friends  in  Washington  at  this 
time  was  young  Theodore  Roosevelt,  who  had  resigned  his 
position  as  Police  Commissioner  in  New  York  City  to  be 
come  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  His  life  on  a  Dakota 
ranch  had  not  only  filled  him  with  a  love  for  western  trails 
and  sympathy  with  western  men,  but  had  created  in  him  a 
special  interest  in  western  writers.  No  doubt  it  was  this 
regard  for  the  historians  of  the  West  which  led  him  to  invite 
me  to  his  house;  for  during  the  winter  I  occasionally  lunched 
or  dined  with  him.  He  also  gave  me  the  run  of  his  office, 
and  there  I  sometimes  saw  him  in  action,  steering  the  de 
partment  toward  efficiency. 

54 


The    Telegraph     Trail 

Though  nominally  Assistant  Secretary  he  was  in  fact  the 
Head  of  the  Navy,  boldly  pushing  plans  to  increase  its 
fighting  power.  This  I  know,  for  one  day  as  I  sat  in  his 
office  I  heard  him  giving  orders  for  gun  practice  and  dis 
cussing  the  higher  armament  of  certain  ships.  I  remember 
his  words  as  he  showed  me  a  sheet  on  which  was  indicated 
the  relative  strength  of  the  world's  navies.  "We  must  raise 
all  our  guns  to  a  higher  power,"  he  said  with  characteristic 
emphasis. 

John  Hay,  Senator  Lodge,  Major  Powell  and  Edward  Eg- 
gleston  were  among  my  most  distinguished  hosts  during  this 
winter  and  I  have  many  pleasant  memories  of  these  highly 
distinctive  personalities.  Major  Powell  appealed  to  me  with 
especial  power  by  reason  of  his  heroic  past.  He  had  been  an 
engineer  under  Grant  at  Vicksburg  and  was  very  helpful  to 
me  in  stating  the  methods  of  the  siege,  but  his  experiences 
after  the  war  were  still  more  romantic.  Though  a  small 
man  and  with  but  one  arm,  he  had  nevertheless  led  a  fleet 
of  canoes  through  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado — the 
first  successful  attempt  at  navigating  that  savage  and  sullen 
river,  and  his  laconic  account  of  it  enormously  impressed 
me.  He  was,  at  this  time,  the  well-known  head  of  the  Eth 
nological  Bureau,  and  I  frequently  saw  him  at  the  Cosmos 
Club,  grouped  with  Langley,  Merriam,  Howard  and  other 
of  my  scientific  friends.  He  was  a  somber,  silent,  and  rather 
unkempt  figure,  with  the  look  of  a  dreaming  lion  on  his  face. 
It  was  hard  to  relate  him  with  the  man  who  had  conquered 
the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado. 

His  direct  antithesis  was  Edward  Eggleston,  whose  resi 
dence  was  a  small  brick  house  just  back  of  the  Congressional 
Library.  Eggleston,  humorous,  ready  of  speech,  was  usually 
surrounded  by  an  attentive  circle  of  delighted  listeners  and 
I  often  drew  near  to  share  his  monologue.  He  was  a  hand 
some  man,  tall  and  shapely  with  abundant  gray  hair  and  a 
full  beard,  and  was  especially  learned  in  American  early 

55 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

history.  "Edward  loves  to  monologue,"  his  friends  smilingly 
said  as  if  in  criticism,  but  to  me  his  talk  was  always  in 
teresting. 

We  became  friends  on  the  basis  of  a  common  love  for 
the  Western  prairie,  which  he,  as  a  "circuit  rider"  in  Minne 
sota  had  minutely  explored.  I  told  him,  gladly  and  in  some 
detail,  of  my  first  reading  of  The  Howler  School-master, 
and  in  return  for  my  interest  he  wrote  a  full  page  of  explana 
tion  on  the  fly  leaf  of  a  copy  which  I  still  own  and  value 
highly,  for  I  regard  him  now,  as  I  did  then,  as  one  of  the 
brave  pioneers  of  distinctive  Middle  Border  fiction. 

Roosevelt  considered  me  something  of  a  Populist,  (as  I 
was),  and  I  well  remember  a  dinner  in  Senator  Lodge's 
house  where  he  and  Henry  Adams  heckled  me  for  an  hour  or 
more  in  order  to  obtain  a  statement  of  what  I  thought 
"ailed"  Kansas,  Nebraska  and  Dakota.  They  all  held  the 
notion  that  I  understood  these  farmer  folk  well  enough  to 
reflect  their  secret  antagonisms,  which  I  certainly  did.  I 
recall  getting  pretty  hot  in  my  plea,  but  Roosevelt  seemed 
rather  proud  of  me  as  I  warmly  defended  my  former  neigh- 
bor.  "The  man  on  the  rented  farm  who  is  raising  corn 
at  fifteen  cents  per  bushel  to  pay  interest  on  a  mortgage  is 
apt  to  be  bitter^,"  I  argued. 

However,  this  evening  was  an  exception.  Generally  we 
talked  of  the  West,  of  cattle  ranching,  of  trailing  and  of  the 
splendid  types  of  pioneers  who  were  about  to  vanish  from 
the  earth.  One  night  as  we  sat  at  dinner  in  his  house,  he 
suddenly  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  said  with  a  smile  "I 
can't  tell  you  how  I  enjoy  having  a  man  at  my  table  who 
knows  the  difference  between  a  parfleshche  and  an  apparejo." 
Although  I  loved  the  trail  I  had  given  up  shooting.  I 
no  longer  carried  a  gun  even  in  the  hills— although,  I  will 
admit,  I  permitted  my  companions  to  do  so.  Roosevelt  dif 
fered  from  me  in  this.  He  loved  "the  song  of  the  bullet." 
"It  gives  point  and  significance  to  the  trail,"  he  explained. 

56 


The     Telegraph     Trail 

I  recall  quoting  to  him  one  of  his  own  vividly  beautiful 
descriptions  of  dawn  among  the  hills,  a  story  which  led 
up  to  the  stalking  and  the  death  of  a  noble  elk.  "It  was 
fine,  all  fine  and  true  and  poetic,"  I  declared,  "but  I  should 
have  listened  with  gratitude  to  the  voice  of  the  elk  and 
watched  him  go  his  appointed  way  in  peace." 

"I  understand  your  position  perfectly,"  he  replied,  "but 
it  is  illogical.  You  must  remember  every  wild  animal  dies 
a  violent  death.  Elk  and  deer  and  pheasants  are  periodically 
destroyed  by  snows  and  storms  of  sleet — and  what  about 
the  butcher  killing  lambs  and  chickens  for  your  table?  I 
notice  you  accept  my  roast  duck." 

He  was  greatly  interested  in  my  proposed  trip  into  the 
Yukon.  "By  George,  I  wish  I  could  go  with  you,"  he  said, 
and  I  had  no  doubt  of  his  sincerity.  Then  his  tone  changed. 
"We  are  in  for  trouble  with  Spain  and  I  must  be  on  the  job." 

To  this  I  replied,  "If  I  really  knew  that  war  was  coming, 
I'd  give  up  my  trip,  but  I  can't  believe  the  Spaniards  intend 
to  fight,  and  this  is  my  last  and  best  chance  to  see  the 
Northwest." 

In  my  notebook  I  find  this  entry:  "Jan.,  1898.  Dined 
again  last  night  with  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Assistant  Secre 
tary  of  the  Navy,  a  man  who  is  likely  to  be  much  in  the 
public  eye  during  his  life.  A  man  of  great  energy,  of  noble 
impulses,  and  of  undoubted  ability." 

I  do  not  put  this  forward'  as  evidence  of  singular  percep 
tion  on  my  part,  for  I  imagine  thousands  were  saying  pre 
cisely  the  same  thing.  I  merely  include  it  to  prove  that  I 
was  not  entirely  lacking  in  penetration. 

Henry  B.  Fuller,  who  came  along  one  day  in  January, 
proved  a  joy  and  comfort  to  me.  His  attitude  toward  Wash 
ington  amused  me.  Assuming  the  air  of  a  Cook  tourist,  he 
methodically,  and  meticulously  explored  the  city,  bringing 
to  me  each  night  a  detailed  report  of  what  he  had  seen. 
His  concise,  humorous  and  self-derisive  comment  was  litera- 

57 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

ture  of  a  most  delightful  quality,  and  I  repeatedly  urged 
him  to  write  of  the  capital  as  he  talked  of  it  to  me,  but 
he  professed  to  have  lost  his  desire  to  write,  and  though  I 
did  not  believe  this,  I  hated  to  hear  him  say  it,  for  I  valued 
his  satiric  humor  and  his  wide  knowledge  of  life. 

He  was  amazed  when  I  told  him  of  my  plan  to  start,  in 
April,  for  the  Yukon,  and  in  answer  to  his  question  I  said, 
"I  need  an  expedition  of  heroic  sort  to  complete  my  educa 
tion,  and  to  wash  the  library  dust  out  of  my  brain." 

In  response  to  a  cordial  note,  I  called  upon  John  Hay 
one  morning.  He  received  me  in  a  little  room  off  the  main 
hall  of  his  house,  whose  spaciousness  made  him  seem  diminu 
tive.  He  struck  me  as  a  dapper  man,  noticeably,  but  not 
offensively,  self-satisfied.  His  fine  black  beard  was  streaked 
with  white,  but  his  complexion  was  youthfully  clear. 
Though  undersized  he  was  compact  and  sturdy,  and  his 
voice  was  crisp,  musical,  and  decisive. 

We  talked  of  Grant,  of  whom  he  had  many  pleasing  per 
sonal  recollections,  and  when  a  little  later  we  went  for  a 
walk,  he  grew  curiously  wistful  and  spoke  of  his  youth  in 
the  West  and  of  the  simple  life  of  his  early  days  in  Wash 
ington  with  tenderness.  It  appeared  that  wealth  and  honor 
had  not  made  him  happy.  Doubtless  this  was  only  a  mood, 
for  in  parting  he  reassumed  his  smiling  official  pose. 

A  few  days  later  as  I  entered  my  Hotel  I  confronted  the 
tall  figure  and  somber,  introspective  face  of  General  Long- 
street  whom  I  had  visited  a  year  before  at  his  home  in 
Gainesville,  Georgia.  We  conversed  a  few  moments,  then 
shook  hands  and  parted,  but  as  he  passed  into  the  street 
I  followed  him.  From  the  door-step  I  watched  him  slowly 
making  his  cautious  way  through  throngs  of  lesser  men 
(who  gave  no  special  heed  to  him),  and  as  I  thought  of  the 
days  when  his  dread  name  was  second  only  to  Lee's  in  the 
fear  and  admiration  of  the  North,  I  marveled  at  the  change 

58 


The    Telegraph     Trail 

in  twenty  years.    Now  he  was  a  deaf,  hesitant  old  man,  sor 
rowful  of  aspect,  poor,  dim-eyed,  neglected,  and  alone. 

"Swift  are  the  changes  of  life,  and  especially  of  American 
life,"  I  made  note.  "Most  people  think  of  Longstreet  as 
a  dead  man,  yet  there  he  walks,  the  gray  ghost  of  the 
Confederacy,  silent,  alone." 

As  spring  came  on  and  the  end  of  my  history  of  Grant 
drew  near,  my  longing  for  the  open  air,  the  forest  and  the 
trail,  made  proof-reading  a  punishment.  My  eyes  (weary 
of  newspaper  files  and  manuscripts)  filled  with  mountain 
pictures.  Visioning  my  plunge  into  the  wilderness  with 
keenest  longing,  I  collected  a  kit  of  cooking  utensils,  a 
sleeping  bag  and  some  pack  saddles  (which  my  friend,  A.  A. 
Anderson,  had  invented),  together  with  all  information  con 
cerning  British  Columbia  and  the  proper  time  for  hitting 
The  Long  Trail. 

In  showing  my  maps  to  Howells  in  New  York,  I  casually 
remarked,  "I  shall  go  in  here,  and  come  out  there — over  a 
thousand  miles  of  Trail,"  and  as  he  looked  at  me  in  wonder, 
I  had  a  sudden  realization  of  what  that  remark  meant.  A 
vision  of  myself,  a  minute,  almost  indistinguishable  insect- 
creeping  hardily  through  an  illimitable  forest  filled  my  im 
agination,  and  a  momentary  awe  fell  upon  me. 

"How  easy  it  would  be  to  break  a  leg,  or  go  down  with 
my  horse  in  an  icy  river! "  I  thought.  Nevertheless,  I  pro 
ceeded  with  my  explanations,  gayly  assuring  Howells  that 
it  was  only  a  magnificent  outing,  quoting  to  him  from  cer 
tain  circulars,  passages  of  tempting  descriptions  in  which 
"splendid  savannahs"  and  "herds  of  deer  and  caribou"  were 
used  with  fine  effect. 

In  my  secret  heart  I  hoped  to  recapture  some  part  of  that  •' 
Spirit  of  the  Sunset  which  my  father  had  found  and  loved  in 
Central  Minnesota  in  Fifty-eight.     Deeper  still,  I  had  a 
hope  of  reenacting,  in  helpful  degree,  the  epic  days  of 

59 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

Forty-nine,  when  men  found  their  painful  way  up  the 
Platte  Canon,  and  over  the  Continental  Divide  to  Oregon. 
"It  is  my  last  chance  to  do  a  bit  of  real  mountaineering,  of 
going  to  school  to  the  valiant  wilderness,"  I  said,  "and  I  can 
not  afford  to  miss  the  opportunity  of  winning  a  master's  de 
gree  in  hardihood." 

That  I  suffered  occasional  moments  of  depression  and 
doubt,  the  pages  of  my  diary  bear  witness.  At  a  time  when 
my  stories  were  listed  in  half  the  leading  magazines,  I 
gravely  set  down  the  facts  of  my  situation.  "In  far  away 
Dakota  my  father  is  living  alone  on  a  bleak  farm,  cooking 
his  own  food  and  caring  for  a  dozen  head  of  horses,  while 
my  mother,  with  failing  eyes  and  shortening  steps,  waits  for 
him  and  for  me  in  West  Salem  with  only  an  invalid  sister- 
in-law  to  keep  her  company.  In  a  very  real  sense  they 
are  all  depending  upon  me  for  help  and  guidance.  I  am 
now  the  head  of  the  house,  and  yet — here  I  sit  planning  a 
dangerous  adventure  into  Alaska  at  a  time  when  I  should 
be  at  home." 

My  throat  ached  with  pity  whenever  I  received  a  letter 
from  my  mother,  for  she  never  failed  to  express  a  growing 
longing  for  her  sons,  neither  of  whom  could  be  with  her. 
To  do  our  chosen  work  a  residence  in  the  city  was  neces 
sary,  and  so  it  came  about  that  all  my  victories,  all  my 
small  successes  were  shadowed  by  my  mother's  failing 
health  and  loneliness. 

****** 

It  remains  to  say  that  during  all  this  time  I  had  heard 
very  little  of  Miss  Zulime  Taft.  No  letters  had  passed 
between  us,  but  I  now  learned  through  her  brother  that 
she  was  planning  to  come  home  during  the  summer,  a  fact 
which  should  have  given  me  a  thrill,  but  as  more  than  four 
years  had  passed  since  our  meeting  in  Chicago,  I  merely 
wondered  whether  her  stay  in  Paris  had  greatly  changed 
her  character  for  the  better.  "She  will  probably  be  more 

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The    Telegraph     Trail 

French  than  American  when  she  returns,"  I  said  to  Lorado, 
when  he  spoke  of  her. 

"Her  letters  do  not  sound  that  way,"  he  answered.  "She 
seems  eager  to  return,  and  says  that  she  intends  to  work 
with  me  here  in  Chicago." 

Early  in  March,  I  notified  Babcock  to  meet  me  at  Ash- 
croft  in  British  Columbia  on  April  isth.  "We'll  outfit 
there,  and  go  in  by  way  of  Quesnelle,"  I  added,  and  with 
a  mind  filled  with  visions  of  splendid  streams,  grassy  val 
leys  and  glorious  camps  among  eagle-haunted  peaks,  I  fin 
ished  the  final  pages  of  my  proof  and  started  West,  boyishly 
eager  to  set  forth  upon  the  mighty  circuit  of  my  projected 
exploration. 

"This  is  the  end  of  my  historical  writing,"  I  notified  Mc- 
Clure.  "I'm  going  back  to  my  fiction  of  the  Middle  Bor 
der." 

On  a  radiant  April  morning  I  reached  the  homestead  find 
ing  mother  fairly  well,  but  greatly  disturbed  over  my  plan. 
"I  don't  like  to  have  you  go  exploring,"  she  said.  "It's 
dangerous.  Why  do  you  do  it?" 

Her  voice,  the  look  of  her  face,  took  away  the  spirit  of 
my  adventure.  I  felt  like  giving  it  up,  but  with  all  ar 
rangements  definitely  made  I  could  do  nothing  but  go  on. 
The  weather  was  clear  and  warm,  with  an  odorous  south 
wind  drawing  forth  the  leaves,  and  as  I  fell  to  work,  raking 
up  the  yard,  the  smell  of  unfolding  blooms,  the  call  of 
exultant  "high-holders"  and  the  chirp  of  cheerful  robins 
brought  back  with  a  rush,  all  the  sweet,  associated  memories 
of  other  springs  and  other  gardens,  making  my  gold-seeking 
expedition  seem  not  only  chimerical,  but  traitorous  to  my 
duties. 

The  hens  were  singing  their  cheerful,  changeless  song 
below  the  stable  wall;  calves  were  bawling  from  the  neigh 
boring  farm-yards  and  on  the  mellow  soil  the  shining,  broad 
cast  seeders  were  clattering  to  their  work,  while  over  the 

61 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

greening  hills  a  faint  mist  wavered,  delicate  as  a  bride's 
veil.  Was  it  not  a  kind  of  madness  to  exchange  the  se 
curity,  the  peace,  the  comfort  of  this  homestead,  for  the 
hardships  of  a  trail  whose  circuit  could  not  be  less  than 
ten  thousand  miles,  a  journey  which  offered  possible  injury 
and  certain  deprivation? 

The  thought  which  gave  me  most  uneasiness  was  not 
my  danger  but  the  knowledge  that  in  leaving  my  mother 
to  silently  brood  over  the  perils  which  she  naturally  ex 
aggerated,  I  was  recreant  to  my  pledge.  Expression  was 
always  elliptical  with  her,  and  I  shall  never  know  how 
keenly  she  suffered  during  those  days  of  preparation.  In 
stead  of  acquiring  a  new  daughter,  she  seemed  on  the  point 
of  losing  a  son. 

She  grudged  every  moment  of  the  hours  which  I  spent 
in  my  study.  There  was  so  little  for  her  to  do!  She  kept 
her  chair  during  her  waking  hours  either  on  the  porch 
overlooking  the  garden  or  in  the  kitchen  supervising  the 
women  at  their  work.  Every  slightest  event  was  pitifully 
important  in  her  life.  The  passing  of  the  railway  trains, 
the  milking  of  the  cow,  the  watering  of  the  horses,  the  gath 
ering  of  the  eggs — these  were  important  events  in  her 
diary.  My  incessant  journeyings,  my  distant  destinations 
lay  far  beyond  her  utmost  imagining.  To  her  my  comings 
and  goings  were  as  mysterious,  as  incalculable  as  the  orbits 
of  the  moon,  and  I  think  she  must  have  sometimes  ques 
tioned  whether  Hamlin  Garland,  the  historian,  could  pos 
sibly  be  the  son  for  whom  she  had  once  knit  mittens  and 
repaired  kites. 

If  I  had  not  been  under  contract,  if  I  had  not  gone  so 
far  in  preparation  and  announcement  that  to  quit  would 
have  been  disgraceful,  I  would  have  given  up  my  trip  on 
her  account.  "I  am  ashamed  to  turn  back.  I  must  go  on," 
I  said.  "I  won't  be  gone  long.  I'll  come  out  by  way  of 
the  Stickeen." 

When  the  time  came  to  say  good-bye,  she  broke  down 

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The     Telegraph     Trail 

utterly  and  I  went  away  with  a  painful  constriction  in  my 
own  throat,  a  lump  which  lasted  for  hourc.  Not  till  on  the 
second  day  as  I  saw  droves  of  Canadian  antelope  racing 
with  the  train,  whilst  flights  of  geese  overhead  gave  certain 
sign  of  the  wilderness,  did  I  regain  my  desire  to  explore 
the  valleys  of  the  North.  That  lonely  old  woman  on 
the  porch  of  the  Homestead  was  never  absent  from  my 
mind. 

Promptly  on  the  afternoon  of  my  arrival  at  Ashcroft  on 
the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway,  Burton  Babcock,  wearing  a 
sombrero  and  a  suit  of  corduroy,  dropped  from  the  east- 
bound  train,  a  duffel  bag  in  his  right  hand,  and  a  newly- 
invented  camp-stove  in  the  other.  "Well,  here  I  am,"  he 
said,  with  his  characteristic  chuckle. 

Ready  for  the  road,  and  with  no  regrets,  no  hesitancies, 
no  fears,  he  set  to  work  getting  our  outfit  together  leaving 
me  to  gather  what  information  I  could  concerning  the  route 
which  we  had  elected  to  traverse. 

It  was  hard  for  me  to  realize  that  this  bent,  bearded, 
grizzled  mountaineer  was  Burt  Babcock,  the  slim  companion 
of  my  Dry  Run  Prairie  boyhood — it  was  only  in  peculiar 
ways  of  laughter,  and  in  a  certain  familiar  pucker  of  wrin 
kles  about  his  eyes,  that  I  traced  the  connecting  link.  I 
must  assume  that  he  found  in  me  something  quite  as  alien — • 
perhaps  more  so,  for  my  life  in  Boston  and  New  York 
had  given  to  me  habits  of  speech  and  of  thought  which 
obscured,  no  doubt,  most  of  my  youthful  characteristics. 

As  I  talked  with  some  of  the  more  thoughtful  and  con 
scientious  citizens  of  the  town,  I  found  them  taking  a  very 
serious  view  of  the  trip  we  were  about  to  undertake.  "It 
is  a  mighty  long,  hard  road,"  they  said,  "and  a  lot  of  men 
are  going  to  find  it  a  test  of  endurance.  Nobody  knows 
anything  about  the  trail  after  you  leave  Quesnelle.  You 
want  to  go  with  a  good  outfit,  prepared  for  two  months  of 
hardship." 

In  view  of  this  warning  I  was  especially  slow  about  buy- 

63 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

ing  ponies.  "I  want  the  best  and  gentlest  beasts  obtain 
able,"  I  said  to  Burton.  "I  am  especially  desirous  of  a 
trustworthy  riding  horse." 

That  evening,  as  I  was  standing  on  the  hotel  porch,  my 
attention  was  attracted  to  a  man  mounted  on  a  spirited 
gray  horse,  riding  up  the  street  toward  the  hotel.  There 
was  something  so  noble  in  the  proud  arch  of  this  horse's 
neck,  something  so  powerful  in  the  fling  of  his  hooves  that 
I  exclaimed  to  the  landlord,  "There  is  the  kind  of  saddle- 
horse  I  am  looking  for!  I  wonder  if  by  any  chance  he 
is  for  sale?" 

The  landlord  smiled.  "He  is.  I  sent  word  to  the  owner 
and  he  has  come  on  purpose  to  see  you.  You  can  have 
the  animal  if  you  want  him  bad  enough." 

The  rider  drew  rein  and  the  landlord  introduced  me  as 
the  man  who  was  in  need  of  a  mount.  Each  moment  my 
desire  to  own  the  horse  deepened,  but  I  was  afraid  to  show 
even  approval.  "How  much  do  you  want  for  him?"  I 
asked  indifferently. 

"Well,  stranger,  I  must  have  fifty  dollars  for  this  horse. 
There  is  a  strain  of  Arabian  in  him,  and  he  is  a  trained 
cow-pony  besides." 

Fifty  dollars  for  an  animal  like  that!  It  was  like  giving 
him  away.  I  was  at  once  suspicious.  "There  must  be  some 
trick  about  him.  He  is  locoed  or  something,"  I  remarked  to 
my  partner. 

We  could  find  nothing  wrong,  however,  and  at  last  I 
passed  over  a  fifty  dollar  bill  and  led  the  horse  away. 

Each  moment  increased  my  joy  and  pride  in  that  dapple- 
gray  gelding.  Undoubtedly  there  was  Arabian  blood  in 
his  veins.  He  had  a  thoroughbred  look.  He  listened  to 
every  word  I  spoke  to  him.  He  followed  me  as  cheerfully 
and  as  readily  as  a  dog.  He  let  me  feel  his  ears  (which 
a  locoed  horse  will  not  do)  and  at  a  touch  of  my  hand 
made  room  for  me  in  his  stall.  In  all  ways  he  seemed  ex- 

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The    Telegraph     Trail 

actly  the  horse  I  had  been  looking  for,  and  I  began  to 
think  of  my  long  ride  over  the  mountains  with  confidence. 

To  put  the  final  touch  to  my  security,  the  owner  as  he 
was  leaving  the  hotel  said  to  me,  with  a  note  of  sadness  in 
his  voice,  "I  hate  to  see  that  horse  take  the  long  trail. 
Treat  him  well,  partner." 

Three  days  later,  mounted  on  my  stately  gray  "Ladrone," 
I  led  my  little  pack-train  out  of  Ashcroft,  bound  for  Teslin 
Lake,  some  twelve  hundred  miles  to  the  Northwest.  It 
was  a  lovely  spring  afternoon,  and  as  I  rode  I  made  some 
rhymes  to  express  my  feeling  of  exultation. 

I  mount  and  mount  toward  the  sky, 

The  eagle's  heart  is  mine. 

I  ride  to  put  the  clouds  below 

Where  silver  lakelets  shine. 

The  roaring  streams  wax  white  with  snow, 

The  granite  peaks  draw  near, 

The  blue  sky  widens,  violets  grow, 

The  air  is  frosty  clear. 

And  so  from  cliff  to  cliff  I  rise, 

The  eagle's  heart  is  mine; 

Above  me,  ever-broadening  skies — 

Below,  the  river's  shine. 


The  next  day  as  we  were  going  down  a  steep  slope,  one 
of  the  pack  horses  bolted  and  ran  round  Ladrone  entan 
gling  me  in  the  lead  rope.  When  I  came  to  myself  I  was 
under  my  horse,  saddle  and  all,  and  Ladrone  was  looking 
down  at  me  in  wonder.  The  tremendous  strain  on  the  rope 
had  pulled  me  saddle  and  all  under  his  belly,  and  had  he 
been  the  ordinary  cayuse  he  would  have  kicked  me  to 
shreds.  To  my  astonishment  and  deep  gratitude  he  re 
mained  perfectly  quiet  while  I  scrambled  out  from  under 
his  feet  and  put  the  saddle  in  place. 

My  partner,  white  with  excitement,  drew  near.  "I 

65 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

thought  you  were  a  goner,"  he  said,  huskily.    "That  horse 
of  yours  is  a  wonder." 

As  I  thought  of  the  look  in  that  gray  pony's  brown  eyes 
whilst  I  lay,  helpless  beneath  him,  my  heart  warmed  with 
gratitude  and  affection.  "Old  boy,"  I  said,  as  I  patted  his 
neck,  "I  will  never  leave  you  to  starve  and  freeze  in  the 
far  north.  If  you  carry  me  through  to  Telegraph  Creek,  I 
will  see  that  you  are  comfortable  for  the  remaining  years 
of  your  life." 

I  mention  this  incident  for  the  reason  that  it  had  far- 
reaching  consequences — as  the  reader  will  discover. 

In  The  Trail  of  the  Goldseekers,  I  have  told  in  detail  my 
story  of  our  expedition.  Suffice  it  to  say,  at  this  point,  that 
we  were  seventy-nine  days  in  the  wilderness,  that  we  were 
eaten  by  flies  and  mosquitoes,  that  we  traveled  in  the  rain, 
camped  in  the  rain,  packed  our  saddles  in  the  rain.  We 
toiled  through  marshes,  slopped  across  miles  of  tundra, 
swam  our  horses  through  roaring  glacial  streams  and  dug 
them  out  of  bog-holes.  For  more  than  two  hundred  miles 
we  walked  in  order  to  lighten  the  loads  of  our  weakened 
animals,  and  when  we  reached  Glenora  we  were  both  past- 
masters  of  the  art  of  camping  through  a  wilderness.  No 
one  could  tell  us  anything  about  packing,  bushing  in  a  slough 
or  managing  a  pack-train.  We  were  master-trailers! 

Burton,  though  a  year  or  two  older  than  I,  proved  an  in 
vincible  explorer,  tireless,  uncomplaining  and  imperturb 
able.  In  all  our  harsh  experiences,  throughout  all  our 
eighty  days  of  struggle  with  mud,  rocks,  insects,  rain,  hun 
ger  and  cold,  he  never  for  one  moment  lost  his  courage. 
Kind  to  our  beasts,  defiant  of  the  weather,  undismayed  by 
any  hardship,  he  kept  the  trail.  He  never  once  lifted  his 
voice  in  anger.  His  endurance  of  my  moods  was  heroic. 

Assuming  more  than  half  of  the  physical  labor  he  loyally 
said,  "You  are  the  boss,  the  historian  of  this  expedition. 
You  are  the  proprietor.  I  am  only  the  hired-man." 

66 


The    Telegraph     Trail 

Such  service  could  not  be  bought.  It  sprang  from  a 
friendship  which  had  begun  twenty-eight  years  before,  an 
attachment  deep  as  our  lives  which  could  not  be  broken. 

On  the  seventy-ninth  day,  ragged,  swarthy,  bearded  like 
Forty-niners,  with  only  a  handful  of  flour  and  a  lump  of 
bacon  left  in  our  kit  we  came  down  to  the  Third  Fork  of 
the  Stickeen  River,  without  a  flake  of  gold  to  show  for  our 
"panning"  the  sands  along  our  way.  My  diaries  state  that 
for  more  than  thirty  days  of  this  journey  it  rained,  and  as 
I  look  back  upon  our  three  weeks  in  the  Skeena  valley  I 
shiver  with  a  kind  of  retrospective  terror.  At  one  time  it 
looked  as  though  we  must  leave  all  our  horses  in  that  gloomy 
forest.  Ladrone  lost  the  proud  arch  of  his  neck  and  the 
light  lift  of  his  small  feet.  He  could  no  longer  carry  me 
up  the  steeps  and  his  ribs  showed  pitifully. 

At  Glenora,  in  beautiful  sunny  weather,  we  camped  for 
two  weeks  in  blissful  leisure  while  our  horses  recovered  their 
strength  and  courage.  We  were  all  hungry  for  the  sun. 
For  hours  we  lay  on  the  grass  soaking  our  hides  full  of 
light  and  heat,  discussing  gravely  but  at  our  ease,  the  situa 
tion. 

Our  plan  had  been  to  pack  through  to  Teslin  Lake,  build 
a  raft  there  and  float  down  the  Hotalinqua  into  the  Yukon 
and  so  on  to  Dawson  City,  but  at  Glenora  I  found  a  letter 
from  my  mother  waiting  for  me,  a  pitiful  plea  for  me  to 
"hurry  back,"  and  as  we  were  belated  a  month  or  more,  and 
as  winter  comes  early  in  those  latitudes,  I  decided  to  turn 
over  the  entire  outfit  to  Babcock  and  start  homeward  by 
way  of  Fort  Wrangell. 

"I  can't  afford  to  spend  the  winter  on  the  Yukon,"  I  said 
to  Burton.  "My  mother  is  not  well  and  is  asking  for  me. 
I  will  keep  Ladrone — I  am  going  to  take  him  home  with 
me — but  the  remainder  of  the  outfit  is  yours.  If  you  de 
cide  to  go  on  to  Teslin — which  I  advise  against — you  will 
need  a  thousand  pounds  of  food  and  this  I  will  purchase  for 

67 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

you. — It  is  hard  to  quit  the  trail.  I  feel  as  if  running  a 
pack-train  were  the  main  business  of  my  life  and  that  I  am 
deserting  my  job  in  going  out,  but  that  is  what  I  must  do." 
The  last  Hudson  Bay  trading  steamer  was  due  at  about 
this  time  and  I  decided  to  take  passage  to  Fort  Wrangell 
with  Ladrone,  who  was  almost  as  fat  and  handsome  as  ever. 
Two  weeks  of  delicious  grass  had  done  wonders  for  him. 
I  knew  that  every  horse  driven  through  to  Teslin  Lake 
would  be  turned  out  to  freeze  and  starve  at  the  end  of  the 
trail,  and  I  could  not  think  of  abandoning  my  brave  pony 
to  such  a  fate.  He  had  borne  me  over  mud,  rocks  and 
streams.  He  had  starved  and  shivered  for  me,  and  now  he 
was  to  travel  with  me  back  to  a  more  amiable  climate  at 
least.  "I  could  never  look  my  readers  in  the  face  if  I  left 
him  up  here,"  I  explained  to  my  partners  who  knew  that  I 
intended  to  make  a  book  of  my  experiences. 

It  was  a  sad  moment  for  my  partner  as  for  me  when  I 
led  my  horse  down  to  the  steamer.  Ladrone  seemed  to 
realize  that  he  was  leaving  his  comrades  of  the  trail  for 
he  called  to  them  anxiously,  again  and  again.  He  had  led 
them  for  the  last  time.  When  the  cry  "HYak  KILpy" 
came  next  day  he  would  not  be  there! 

Having  seen  him  safely  stowed  below  deck  I  returned  to 
the  trail  for  a  final  word  with  Burton. 

There  he  stood,  on  the  dock,  brown  with  camp-fire  smoke, 
worn  and  weather  beaten,  his  tireless  hands  folded  behind 
his  back,  a  remote,  dreaming,  melancholy  look  in  his  fear 
less  eyes.  His  limp  sombrero  rested  grotesquely  awry  upon 
his  shaggy  head,  his  trousers  bulged  awkwardly  at  the  knees 
— but  he  was  a  warrior!  Thin  and  worn  and  lame  he  was 
about  to  set  forth  single-handedly  on  a  journey  whose  cir 
cuit  would  carry  him  far  within  the  Arctic  Circle. 

The  boat  began  to  move.  "Good  luck,  Old  Man,"  I 
called. 

68 


The     Telegraph     Trail 

"Good  Luck!"  he  huskily  responded.  "My  love  to  the 
folks." 

I  never  saw  him  again. 

I  went  to  Wrangell,  and  while  camped  there  waiting  for 
a  boat  to  take  me  back  to  the  States  I  heard  of  a  "strike" 
at  Atlin,  somewhere  back  of  Skaguay.  I  decided  to  join  this 
rush,  and  so,  leaving  my  horse  to  pasture  in  the  lush  grass 
of  the  hill-side,  I  took  steamer  for  the  north.  Again  I  out 
fitted,  this  time  at  Skaguay.  I  crossed  the  famous  White 
Pass.  I  reached  Atlin  City.  I  took  a  claim. 

A  month  later  I  returned  to  Wrangell,  picked  up  Ladrone, 
shipped  with  him  to  Seattle  and  so  ceased  to  be  a  gold- 
seeker. 

In  Seattle  my  wonder  and  affection  for  Ladrone  increased. 
He  had  never  seen  a  big  town  before,  or  heard  a  street  car, 
or  met  a  switching  engine,  and  yet  he  followed  me  through 
the  city  like  a  trustworthy  dog,  his  nose  pressed  against  my 
shoulder  as  if  he  knew  I  would  protect  him.  At  the  door 
of  the  freight  car  which  I  had  chartered,  he  hesitated,  but 
only  for  an  instant.  At  the  word  of  command  he  walked 
the  narrow  plank  into  the  dark  interior  and  there  I  left 
him  with  food  and  water,  billed  for  St.  Paul  where  I  ex 
pected  to  meet  him  and  transfer  him  to  a  car  for  West  Salem. 
It  all  seemed  very  foolish  to  some  people  and  my  only  ex 
planation  was  suggested  by  a  brake-man  who  said,  "He's  a 
runnin'  horse,  ain't  he?" 

"Yes,  he's  valuable.  Take  good  care  of  him.  He  is 
Arabian." 


CHAPTER  SIX 

The    Return    of    the    Artist 

AFTER  an  absence  of  five  months  I  returned  to  La 
Crosse  just  in  time  to  eat  Old  Settlers  Dinner  with 
my  mother  at  the  County  Fair,  quite  as  I  used  to  do  in  the 
"early  days"  of  Iowa.  It  was  the  customary  annual  round 
up  of  the  pioneers,  a  time  of  haunting,  sweetly-sad  recol 
lections,  and  all  the  speeches  were  filled  with  allusions  to 
the  days  when  deer  on  the  hills  and  grouse  in  the  meadows 
gave  zest  to  life  upon  the  farms. 

How  peaceful,  how  secure,  how  abundant  my  native  val 
ley  appeared  to  me,  after  those  gloomy  toilsome  months  in 
the  cold,  green  forests  of  British  Columbia — and  how  in 
credible  my  story  must  have  seemed  to  my  mother  as  I  told 
her  of  my  journey  eastward  by  boat  and  train,  bringing 
my  saddle  horse  across  four  thousand  miles  of  wood  and 
wave,  in  order  that  he  might  spend  his  final  years  with  me 
in  the  oat-filled,  sheltered  valley  of  Neshonoc.  "His  cour 
age  and  faithfulness  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  leave  him 
up  there,"  I  explained. 

He  had  arrived  on  the  train  which  preceded  me,  and 
was  still  in  the  car.  At  the  urgent  request  of  my  Uncle 
Frank  I  unloaded  him,  saddled  him,  and  rode  him  down  to 
the  fair-ground,  wearing  my  travel-scarred  sombrero,  my 
faded  trailer's  suit  and  my  leggings,  a  mild  exhibition  of 
vanity  which  I  trust  the  reader  will  overlook,  for  in  doing 
this  I  not  only  gave  keen  joy  to  my  relatives,  but  furnished 
another  "Feature"  to  the  show. 

70 


The    Return    of    the    Artist 

My  friend,  Samuel  McKee,  the  Presbyterian  minister  in 
the  village,  being  from  Kentucky,  came  nearer  to  under 
standing  the  value  of  my  horse  than  any  other  spectator. 
"I  don't  wonder  you  brought  him  back,"  he  said,  after  care 
ful  study.  "He  is  a  beauty.  There's  a  strain  of  Arabian 
in  him." 

My  mother's  joy  over  my  safe  return  was  quite  as  word 
less  as  her  sorrow  at  our  parting  (in  April)  had  been.  To 
have  me  close  beside  her,  to  lay  her  hand  upon  my  arm, 
filled  her  with  inexpressible  content.  She  could  not  im 
agine  the  hundredth  part  of  the  hardships  I  had  endured, 
and  I  made  no  special  effort  to  enlighten  her — I  merely  said, 
"You  needn't  worry,  mother,  one  such  experience  is  enough. 
I  shall  never  leave  you  for  so  many  months  again,"  and  I 
meant  it. 

With  a  shy  smile  and  a  hesitant  voice,  she  reverted  to  a 
subject  which  was  of  increasing  interest  to  her.  "What 
about  my  new  daughter?  When  am  I  to  see  her?  I  hope 
now  you'll  begin  to  think  of  a  wife.  First  thing  you  know 
you'll  be  too  old." 

My  reply  was  vaguely  jocular.  "Be  patient  a  little  while 
longer.  I  shall  seriously  set  to  work  and  see  what  I  can 
find  for  you  by  way  of  a  daughter-in-law." 

"Choose  a  nice  one,"  she  persisted.  "One  that  will  like  the 
old  house — and  me.  Don't  get  one  who  will  be  too  stylish 
to  live  here  with  us." 

In  this  enterprise  I  was  not  as  confident  as  I  appeared, 
for  the  problem  was  not  simple.  "The  girl  who  can  con 
sent  to  be  my  wife  must  needs  have  a  generous  heart  and 
a  broad  mind,  to  understand  (and  share)  the  humble  con 
ditions  of  my  life,  and  to  tolerate  the  simple,  old-fashioned 
notions  of  my  people.  It  will  not  be  easy,"  I  acknowledged. 
"I  can  not  afford  to  make  a  mistake — one  that  will  bring 
grief  and  not  happiness  to  the  homestead  and  its  mistress." 

However,  I  decided  to  let  that  worry  stand  over.     "Suf- 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

ficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof,"  was  a  saying  which 
my  father  often  repeated — and  yet  I  was  nearing  the  dead 
line!  I  was  thirty-eight. 

That  first  night  of  my  return  to  the  valley  was  of  such 
rich  and  tender  beauty  that  all  the  suffering,  the  hardships 
of  my  exploration  were  forgotten.  The  moon  was  at  its 
full,  and  while  the  crickets  and  the  katydids  sang  in  unison, 
the  hills  dreamed  in  the  misty  distance  like  vast,  peaceful, 
patient,  crouching  animals.  The  wheat  and  corn  burdened 
the  warm  wind  with  messages  of  safely-garnered  harvests, 
and  my  mind,  reacting  to  the  serenity,  the  peace,  the  opu 
lence  of  it  all,  was  at  rest.  The  dark  swamps  of  the  Bulkley, 
the  poisonous  plants  of  the  Skeena,  the  endless  ice-cold 
marshes  of  the  high  country,  the  stinging  insects  of  the 
tundra,  and  the  hurtling  clouds  of  the  White  Pass,  all  seemed 
events  of  another  and  more  austere  planet. 

On  the  day  following  the  fair,  just  as  I  was  stripping 
my  coat  and  rolling  my  sleeves  to  help  my  father  fence  in 
a  pasture  for  Ladrone,  a  neighbor  came  along  bringing 
a  package  from  the  post  office.  It  was  a  book,  a  copy  of 
my  Life  of  Grant,  the  first  I  had  seen;  and,  as  I  opened  it 
I  laughed,  for  I  bore  little  resemblance  to  a  cloistered  his 
torian  at  the  moment.  My  face  was  the  color  of  a  worn 
saddle;  my  fingers  resembled  hooks  of  bronze,  and  my  feet 
carried  huge,  hob-nail  shoes.  "What  would  Dr.  Brander 
Matthews,  Colonel  Church  and  Howells,  who  had  warmly 
commended  the  book,  think  of  me  at  this  moment?"  I  asked 
myself. 

Father  was  interested,  of  course,  but  he  was  not  one  to 
permit  a  literary  interest  to  interfere  with  a  very  important 
job.  "Bring  that  spade,"  commanded  he,  and  putting  my 
history  on  top  of  a  post,  I  set  to  work,  digging  another  hole, 
rejoicing  in  my  strength,  for  at  that  time  I  weighed  one 
hundred  and  eighty  pounds,  all  bone  and  muscle.  So  much 
the  trail  had  done  for  me. 

72 


The    Return    of    the    Artist 

I  had  broadened  my  palms  to  the  cinch  and  the  axe — 
I  had  laid  my  breast  to  the  rain." 

Nothing  physical  appalled  me,  and  no  labor  really  wearied 
me. 

Oh,  the  wealth  of  that  day's  sunlight,  the  opulence  of 
those  nearby  fields — the  beauty  of  those  warmly-misted 
hills!  In  the  evening,  as  I  mounted  Ladrone  and  rode  him 
down  the  lane,  I  had  no  desire  to  share  Burton's  perilous 
journey  down  the  Hotalinqua. 

As  my  mother's  excitement  over  my  return  passed  away, 
her  condition  was  disturbing  to  me.  She  was  walking  less 
and  less  and  I  began  at  once  to  consider  a  course  of  treat 
ment  which  might  help  her.  At  my  aunt's  sugestion  I 
wrote  to  a  physician  in  Madison  whose  sanitarium  she  had 
found  helpful,  and  as  my  brother  chanced  to  be  playing  in 
Milwaukee,  I  induced  mother  to  go  with  me  to  visit  him. 
She  consented  quite  readily  for  she  was  eager  to  see  him 
in  a  real  theater  and  a  real  play. 

We  took  lodging  in  one  of  the  leading  hotels,  which 
seemed  very  splendid  to  her  and  that  night  she  saw  Frank 
lin  on  the  stage  as  one  of  "the  three  Dromios"  in  a  farce 
called  "Incog."  a  piece  which  made  her  laugh  till  she 
was  almost  breathless. 

Next  day  we  took  her  shopping.  That  is  to  say  she  went 
along  with  us  a  helpless  victim,  while  we  purchased  for  her 
a  hat  and  cloak,  at  an  expense  which  seemed  to  her  almost 
criminal.  They  were  in  truth  very  plain  garments,  and 
comparatively  inexpensive,  but  her  tender  heart  overflowed 
with  pride  of  her  sons  and  a  guilty  joy  in  their  extravagance. 
Many  times  afterward  I  experienced,  as- 1  do  at  this  mo 
ment,  a  sharp  pang  of  regret  that  I  did  not  insist  on  a  bet 
ter  cloak,  a  more  beautiful  hat.  I  only  hope  she  under 
stood  ! 

In  this  way,  or  some  other  way,  I  bribed  her  to  go  with 
me  to  Madison,  to  the  Sanitarium.  "You  must  not  run 

73 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

home,"  I  said  to  her.  "Make  a  fair  trial  of  the  Institution." 
To  this  she  uttered  no  reply  and  as  she  did  not  appear 
homesick  or  depressed,  I  prepared  to  leave,  with  a  feeling 
that  she  was  in  good  hands,  and  that  her  health  would  be 
greatly  benefited  by  the  regimen.  "I  must  go  to  the  city 
and  look  up  that  new  daughter,"  I  said  to  her  in  excuse  for 
deserting  her,  and  this  made  her  entirely  willing  to  let  me  go. 
Chicago  brilliantly  illuminated,  was  filled  with  the  spirit 
of  the  Peace  Jubilee,  as  I  entered  it.  State  Street,  grandly 
impressive  under  the  sweep  of  a  raw  east  wind,  was  gay 
with  banners  and  sparkling  with  looping  thousands  of  elec 
tric  lights,  but  I  hurried  at  once  to  my  study  on  Elm  Street. 
In  half  an  hour  I  was  deep  in  my  correspondence.  The 
Telegraph  Trail  was  a  million  miles  away,  New  York  and 
its  publishers  claimed  my  full  attention  once  again. 

At  two  o'clock  next  day  I  entered  Taft's  studio,  where  I 
received  many  cordial  congratulations  on  my  return.  "I 
can't  understand  why  you  went,"  Lorado  said,  and  when, 
at  the  close  of  the  afternoon,  Browne,  his  brother-in-law, 
invited  me  to  dinner,  saying,  "You'll  find  Miss  Zulime  Taf t 
there,"  I  accepted.  Although  in  some  doubt  about  Miss 
Taft's  desire  to  meet  me,  I  was  curious  to  know  what 
four  years  of  Paris  had  done  for  her. 

Browne  explained  that  she  was  going  to  take  up  some 
sort  of  work  in  Chicago.  "She's  had  enough  of  the  Old 
World  for  the  present." 

As  he  let  us  into  the  hall  of  his  West  Side  apartment, 
I  caught  a  momentary  glimpse  of  a  young  woman  seated  in 
the  living  room,  busily  sewing.  She  rose  calmly,  though  a 
little  surprised  at  our  invasion,  and  with  her  rising,  spools 
of  thread  and  bits  of  cloth  fell  away  from  her  with  comic 
effect,  although  her  expression  remained  loftily  serene. 

"Hello,  sister  Zuhl,"  called  Browne.  "Here  is  an  old- 
time  friend  of  yours." 

As  she  greeted  me  with  entire  self-possession  I  hardly  rec- 

74 


The    Return    of    the    Artist 

ognized  her  relationship  to  the  pale,  self-possessed  art-stu 
dent,  with  whom  I  had  held  unprofitable  argument  some 
four  years  before.  She  was  much  more  mature  and  in  better 
health  than  when  I  last  saw  her.  She  carried  herself  with 
dignity,  and  her  gown,  graceful  of  line  and  rich  in  color, 
fitted  her  beautifully. 

With  no  allusion  to  our  former  differences  she  was  kind 
enough  to  say  that  she  had  been  a  delighted  reader  of  my 
stories  in  the  magazines,  and  that  she  approved  of  America. 
"I've  come  back  to  stay,"  she  said,  and  we  all  applauded 
her  statement. 

As  the  evening  deepened  I  perceived  that  her  long  stay  in 
England  and  in  France  had  done  a  great  deal  for  Zulime 
Taft.  She  was  not  only  well  informed  in  art  matters,  she 
conversed  easily  and  tactfully,  and  her  accent  was  refined 
without  being  affected.  As  we  settled  into  our  seats  around 
the  dinner  table,  I  was  glad  to  find  her  opposite  me. 

She  had  met  many  interesting  and  distinguished  people, 
both  in  London  and  on  the  Continent,  and  she  brought  to 
our  little  circle  that  night  the  latest  word  in  French  art. 
Indeed,  her  comment  was  so  entertaining,  and  so  valuable, 
that  I  was  quite  converted  to  her  brother's  judgment  con 
cerning  her  term  of  exile:  "Whether  you  go  on  with  your 
sculpture  or  not,"  he  said,  "those  four  years  of  Europe  have 
done  more  for  you  than  a  college  course." 

She  represented  everything  antithetic  to  the  trail  and  the 
farm.  She  knew  little  of  New  England  and  nothing  of  the 
Mountain  West.  In  many  ways  she  was  entirely  alien  to 
my  life  and  yet — or  rather  because  of  that — she  interested 
me.  Filled  with  theories  concerning  art — enthusiasms  with 
which  the  "American  Colony"  in  Paris  was  aflame,  she 
stated  them  clearly,  forcibly  and  with  humor.  Her  temper 
in  argument  was  admirable  and  no  man  had  occasion  to 
talk  down  at  her — as  Browne,  who  was  a  good  deal  of  a 
conservative,  openly  acknowledged. 

She  was  all  for  "technique,"  it  appeared.  "What  America 

75 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

needs  more  than  subject  is  skill,  knowledge  of  how  to 
paint,"  she  declared.  "Anything  can  be  made  beautiful 
by  the  artist's  brush." 

At  the  close  of  a  most  delightful  evening  Fuller  and  I 
took  our  departure  together,  and  we  were  hardly  out  of 
the  door  before  he  began  to  express  open,  almost  unre 
strained  admiration  of  Zulime  Taft.  "She's  a  very  re 
markable  girl,"  he  said.  "She  will  prove  a  most  valuable 
addition  to  our  circle." 

"Yes,"  I  admitted  with  judicial  poise,  "she  is  very  intelli 
gent." 

"Intelligent!"  he  indignantly  retorted.  "She's  a  beauty. 
She's  a  prize.  Go  in  and  win." 

Although  I  did  not  decide  at  that  moment  to  go  in  and 
win,  I  was  profoundly  affected  by  his  words.  Without 
knowing  anything  more  about  her  than  these  two  meetings 
gave  me,  I  took  it  for  granted — quite  without  warrant,  that 
Fuller  had  learned  from  Lorado  that  she  was  not  com 
mitted  to  any  one.  It  was  fatuous  in  me  but  on  this  as 
sumption  I  acted. 

By  reference  to  letters  and  other  records  I  find  that  I 
dined  at  the  Browne's  on  the  slightest  provocation.  I 
suspect  I  did  so  without  any  invitation  at  all,  for  while 
Miss  Taft  did  not  betray  keen  interest  in  me  she  did  not 
precisely  discourage  me.  I  sought  her  company  as  often 
as  possible  without  calling  especial  attention  to  my  action, 
and  as  she  gave  no  hint  of  being  friendlier  with  any  other 
man,  I  went  cheerily,  blindly  along. 

One  afternoon  as  I  was  taking  tea  at  one  of  the  great 
houses  of  the  Lake  Shore  Drive,  she  came  into  the  room 
with  the  easy  grace  of  one  habituated  to  meeting  people 
of  wealth  and  distinction.  Neither  arrogant  nor  humble,  her 
self-respecting  composure  fairly  sealed  her  conquest  so  far 
as  I  was  concerned. 

The  group  of  artists  surrounding  Taft  had  formed  an 

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The    Return    of    the    Artist 

informal  Saturday  night  club,  which  met  in  a  "Camp  Sup 
per,"  and  in  these  jolly,  intimate  evenings  Miss  Taft  and 
her  sister,  Mrs.  Browne,  were  guiding  spirits.  Being  in 
cluded  in  this  group  I  acknowledged  these  parties  to  be 
the  most  delightful  events  of  my  life  in  Chicago.  They 
appeared  a  bit  of  Bohemia,  "transmogrified"  to  suit  our 
conditions,  and  they  made  the  city  seem  less  like  a  drab 
expanse  of  desolate  materialism. 

Sometimes  a  great  geologist  would  help  to  make  the 
coffee,  while  an  architect  carved  the  turkey;  and  some 
times  banker  Hutchinson  was  permitted  to  aid  in  distribut 
ing  plates  and  spoons,  but  always  Zulime  Taft  was  one  of 
the  hostesses,  and  no  one  added  more  to  the  distinction  and 
the  charm  of  the  company.  She  was  never  out  of  char 
acter,  never  at  a  loss  in  an  effort  to  entertain  her  guests,  and 
yet  she  did  this  so  effectively  that  her  absence  was  in 
stantly  felt — I,  at  least,  always  resented  the  action  of 
those  wealthy  guests  who  occasionally  hurried  away  with 
her  to  the  Thomas  Concert  at  eight-fifteen.  My  mood  was 
all  the  more  bitter  for  the  reason  that  I  could  not  afford 
to  take  her  there  myself.  To  ask  her  to  sit  in  the  gallery- 
was  disgraceful,  and  seats  in  the  balcony  were  not  only 
expensive,  but  almost  impossible  to  get.  They  were  all 
sold,  in  advance,  for  the  season.  For  all  these  reasons  I 
frequently  watched  her  departure  with  a  sense  of  defeat. 

Israel  Zangwill,  who  came  to  town  at  about  this  time  to 
lecture,  was  brought  to  one  of  our  suppers  and  proved  to 
be  of  the  true  artist  spirit.  During  his  stay  in  the  city 
Taft  made  a  quick  sketch  of  him,  catching  most  ad 
mirably  the  characteristics  of  his  homely  face!  He  was  a 
quaint  yet  powerful  personality,  witty  and  wise,  and  genial, 
and  made  friends  wherever  he  went. 

Meanwhile,  notwithstanding  many  pleasant  meetings 
with  Miss  Taft — perhaps  because  of  them — I  had  my  mo 
ments  of  gloomy  introspection  wherein  I  cast  up  accounts 

77 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

in  order  to  determine  what  I  had  gained  by  my  six  months' 
vacation  in  the  wilderness.  First  of  all  I  had  become  a 
master  trailer — so  much  was  assured,  but  this  acquirement 
did  not  promise  to  be  of  any  practical  benefit  to  me  except 
possibly  in  the  way  of  a  lecture  tour.  Broadening  my  hand 
to  the  cinch  and  the  axe  did  not  make  me  any  more  at 
tractive  as  a  suitor  and  certainly  did  not  add  anything  to 
my  capital. 

My  outing  had  cost  me  twice  what  I  had  calculated  upon, 
and,  thus  far,  I  had  only  syndicated  a  few  letters  and  a 
handful  of  poems.  The  book  which  I  had  in  mind  to  write 
was  still  a  mass  of  notes.  My  horse,  whose  transportation 
and  tariff  had  cost  me  a  thousand  dollars,  was  of  little  use 
to  me,  although  I  hoped  to  get  back  a  part  of  his  cost  by 
means  of  a  story.  My  lecture  on  'The  Joys  of  the  Trail" 
promised  to  be  moderately  successful,  and  yet  with  all 
these  things  conjoined  I  did  not  see  myself  earning  enough 
to  warrant  me  in  asking  Zulime  Taft  or  any  woman  to  be 
the  daughter  which  my  mother  was  so  eagerly  awaiting. 

It  was  a  time  of  halting,  of  transition  for  me.  For  six 
years — even  while  writing  my  story  of  Ulysses  Grant  I  had 
been  absorbing  the  mountain  west  in  the  growing  desire  to 
put  it  into  fiction,  and  now  with  a  burden  of  Klondike 
material  to  be  disposed  of,  I  was  subconsciously  at  work 
upon  a  story  of  the  plains  and  the  Rocky  Mountain  foot 
hills.  In  short,  as  a  cattleman  would  say,  I  was  "milling" 
in  the  midst  of  a  wide  landscape. 

I  should  have  gone  on  to  New  York  at  once,  but  with  the 
alluring  associations  of  Taft's  studio,  I  lingered  on  through 
November  and  December,  excusing  myself  by  saying  that 
I  could  work  out  my  problem  better  in  my  own  room  on 
Elm  Street  than  in  a  hotel  in  New  York,  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  I  did  succeed  in  writing  several  chapters  of  the 
Colorado  novel  which  I  called  The  Eagle's  Heart. 

At  last,  late  in  December,  I  bundled  my  manuscripts  to- 

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The    Return    of    the    Artist 

gether  and  set  out  for  the  East.  Perhaps  this  decision  was 
hastened  by  some  editorial  suggestion — at  any  rate  I  ar 
rived,  for  I  find  in  my  diary  the  record  of  a  luncheon  with 
Brander  Matthews  who  said  he  liked  my  Grant  book, — a 
verdict  which  heartened  me  wonderfully.  I  believed  it 
to  be  a  good  book  then,  as  I  do  now,  but  it  was  not  selling 
as  well  as  we  had  confidently  expected  it  to  do  and  my 
publishers  had  lost  interest  in  it. 

The  reason  for  the  failure  of  this  book  was  simple.  The 
war  with  Spain  had  thrust  between  the  readers  of  my  gen 
eration  and  the  Civil  War,  new  commanders,  new  slogans 
and  new  heroes.  To  this  later  younger  public  " General 
Grant"  meant  Frederick  Grant,  and  all  hats  were  off  to 
Dewey,  Wood  and  Roosevelt.  "You  are  precisely  two  years 
late  with  your  story  of  the  Great  Commander,"  I  was  told, 
and  this  I  was  free  to  acknowledge. 

There  is  an  old  proverb  which  had  several  times  exactly 
described  my  situation  and  which  described  it  then.  "It 
is  always  darkest  just  before  dawn,"  proved  to  be  true  of 
this  particular  period  of  discouragement,  for  one  day  while 
at  The  Players,  Brett,  the  head  of  Macmillans,  came  up 
to  me  and  said,  "Why  don't  you  let  me  take  over  your 
Main  Traveled  Roads,  Prairie  Folks,  and  Rose  of  Butcher's 
Coolly?  I  will  do  this  provided  you  will  write  two  new 
books  for  me,  one  to  be  called  Boy  Lije  on  the  Prairie  and 
the  other  a  Klondike  book  based  on  your  experiences  in 
the  North." 

This  offer  cleared  my  sky.  It  not  only  gave  direction  to 
my  pen — it  roused  my  hopes  of  having  a  home  of  my  own, 
for  Brett's  offer  involved  the  advance  of  several  thousand 
dollars  in  royalty.  I  began  to  think  of  marriage  in  a  more 
definite  way.  My  case  was  not  so  hopeless  after  all.  Per 
haps  Zulime  Taft 

Taking  a  room  on  Twenty-fifth  street  I  set  to  work  with 
eager  intensity  to  get  these  five  books  in  shape  for  the 

79 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

Macmillan  press,  and  in  two  weeks  I  had  carefully  revised 
Rose  and  was  hard  at  work  on  the  record  of  my  story  of 
the  Northwest  which  I  called  The  Trail  of  the  Gold  Seekers. 
I  was  done  with  "milling."  I  was  headed  straight  for  a 
home. 

In  calling  upon  Howells  soon  after  my  arrival  I  referred 
to  our  last  meeting  wherein  I  had  lightly  remarked  (put 
ting  my  finger  on  the  map),  "I  shall  go  in  here  at  Quesnelle 
and  come  out  there,  on  the  Stickeen,"  and  said,  "I  am  now 
able  to  report.  I  did  it.  In  spite  of  all  the  chances  for 
failure  I  carried  out  my  program." 

He  asked  about  the  dangers  I  had  undergone,  and  I 
replied  by  saying,  "A  trailer  meets  his  dangers  and  diffi 
culties  one  by  one.  In  the  mass  they  are  appalling  but 
singly  they  are  surmountable.  We  took  each  mile  as  it 
came." 

"What  do  you  intend  to  do  with  your  experiences?"  he 
asked. 

"I  don't  know,  but  I  think  they  will  take  the  form  of  a 
chronicle,  a  kind  of  diary,  wherein  each  chapter  will  be- 
called  a  camp.  Camp  One,  Camp  Two,  and  the  like." 

"That  sounds  original  and  promising,"  he  said,  and  with 
his  encouragement  I  set  to  work. 

Israel  Zangwill  was  often  in  the  city  and  we  met  fre 
quently  during  January  and  February.  I  recall  taking 
him  to  see  Howells  whom  he  greatly  admired  but  had 
never  met.  They  made  a  singularly  interesting  contrast 
of  East  and  West.  Howells  was  serious,  almost  sad  for 
some  reason,  unassuming,  self-unconscious  and  yet  mas 
terly  in  every  word.  Zangwill  on  the  contrary  overflowed 
with  humor,  emitting  a  shower  of  epigrams  concerning 
America  and  the  things  he  liked  and  disliked,  and  soon  had 
Howells  smiling  with  pleased  interest. 

As  we  were  leaving  the  house  Zangwill  remarked  in  a 
musing  tone,  "What  fine  humility,  or  rather  modesty.  I 

80 


The    Return    of    the    Artist 

can't  imagine  any  other  man  of  Howells'  eminence  taking 
that  tone." 

Kipling  had  just  returned  to  America,  and  I  went  at 
once  to  call  upon  him.  I  had  not  seen  him  since  the  dinner 
which  he  gave  to  Riley  and  me  in  the  early  Nineties,  and  I 
was  in  doubt  as  to  his  attitude  toward  the  States.  I  found 
him  in  a  very  happy  mood,  surrounded  by  callers.  In  the 
years  of  his  absence  the  American  public  had  learned  to 
place  a  very  high  value  on  his  work  and  thousands  of  his 
readers  were  eager  to  do  him  honor. 

"They  come  in  a  perfect  stream,"  he  said,  and  there  was 
a  note  of  surprise  as  well  as  of  pleasure  in  his  voice. 

He  inquired  of  Riley  and  Howells  and  other  of  our 
mutual  friends,  making  it  plain  that  he  held  us  all  in  his 
affections.  I  mention  his  youth,  his  happiness,  his  joy  with 
special  emphasis  for  he  was  stricken  with  pneumonia  a  few 
days  later  and  came  so  near  death  that  only  the  most 
skillful  nursing  was  able  to  bring  him  back  to  health.  For 
two  nights  his  life  was  despaired  of,  and  when  he  recovered 
consciousness  it  was  only  to  learn  that  one  of  his  children 
had  died  while  he  himself  was  at  lowest  ebb.  It  was  a  most 
tragic  reversal  of  fortune  but  it  had  this  compensation, 
it  called  forth  such  a  flood  of  sympathy  on  the  part 
of  his  public  that  the  daily  press  carried  hourly 
bulletins  of  his  conditions.  It  was  as  if  a  great  ruler  were 
in  danger. 

On  Saturday  the  eleventh  of  February,  I  attended  a  meet 
ing  (the  first  meeting)  of  the  National  Institute  of  Arts 
and  Letters.  Charles  Dudley  Warner  presided,  but  How 
ells  was  the  chief  figure.  Owen  Wister,  Robert  Underwood 
Johnson,  Augustus  Thomas  and  Bronson  Howard  took  an 
active  part.  Warner  appointed  Thomas  and  me  as  a 
committee  to  outline  a  Constitution  and  By-laws,  and  I 
set  down  in  my  diary  this  comment,  "Only  a  few  men  were 
out  and  these  few  were  chilled  by  a  cold  room  but  never- 

81 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

theless,  this  meeting  is  likely  to  have  far-reaching  conse 
quences." 

In  these  months  of  my  stay  in  New  York  I  had  a  very 
busy  and  profitable  time  with  Howells,  Burroughs,  Sted- 
man,  Matthews,  Herne  and  their  like  as  neighbors  but 
after  all,  my  home  was  in  the  West,  and  many  times  each 
day  my  mind  went  back  to  my  mother  waiting  in  the  snow- 
covered  little  village  thirteen  hundred  miles  away.  As  I 
had  established  her  in  Wisconsin  to  be  near  me,  it  seemed 
a  little  like  desertion  to  be  spending  the  winter  in  the  East. 

My  thoughts  often  returned  to  the  friendly  circle  in 
Taft's  studio,  and  late  in  February  I  was  keenly  interested 
in  a  letter  from  Lorado  in  which  he  informed  me  that  WTal- 
lace  Heckman,  Attorney  for  The  Art  Institute,  had  offered 
to  give  the  land  to  found  a  summer  colony  of  artists  and 
literary  folk  on  the  East  bank  of  Rock  River  about  one 
hundred  miles  west  of  Chicago.  "You  are  to  be  one  of  the 
trustees,"  Lorado  wrote,  "and  as  soon  as  you  get  back,  Mr. 
Heckman  wants  to  take  us  all  out  to  look  at  the  site  for  the 
proposed  camp." 

My  return  to  Chicago  on  the  first  day  of  March  landed 
me  in  the  midst  of  a  bleak  period  of  raw  winds,  filthy  slush 
and  all-pervading  grime — but  with  hopes  which  my  new 
contract  with  Macmillans  had  inspired  I  defied  the  weather. 
I  rejoined  Lorado's  circle  at  once  in  the  expectation  of 
meeting  his  sister,  and  in  this  I  was  not  disappointed. 

Lorado  referred  at  once  to  Heckman's  offer  to  deed  to 
our  group  a  tract  of  land.  "He  wants  you  to  be  one  of  the 
trustees  and  has  invited  us  all  to  go  out  at  once  and  inspect 
the  site." 

Upon  learning  that  Miss  Taft  was  to  be  one  of  the  mem 
bers  of  the  colony  I  accepted  the  trusteeship  very  readily. 
With  three  thousand  dollars  advance  royalty  in  sight,  I 
began  to  imagine  myself  establishing  a  little  home  some 
where  in  or  near  Chicago,  and  the  idea  of  an  inexpensive 

82 


The    Return    of    the    Artist 

summer  camp  such  as  my  artist  friends  had  in  mind,  ap 
pealed  to  me  strongly. 

Alas  for  my  secret  hopes! — Whether  on  this  tour  of  in 
spection  or  a  few  days  later  I  cannot  now  be  sure,  but 
certainly  close  upon  this  date  Lorado  (moved  by  some  con 
fiding  remark  concerning  my  interest  in  his  sister  Zulime) 
explained  to  me  with  an  air  of  embarrassment  that  I  must 
not  travel  any  farther  in  that  direction.  "Sister  Zuhl  came 
back  from  Paris  not  to  paint  or  model  but  to  be  married. 
She  is  definitely  committed  to  another  man."  He  finally, 
bluntly  said. 

This  was  a  bitter  defeat.  Although  one  takes  such  blows 
better  at  thirty-nine  than  at  nineteen,  one  doesn't  lightly  say 
"Oh,  well — such  is  life!"  I  was  in  truth  disheartened.  All 
my  domestic  plans  fell  with  a  crash.  My  interest  in  the 
colony  cooled.  The  camp  suppers  lost  their  charm. 

It  is  only  fair  to  me  to  say  that  Miss  Taft  had  never  in 
dicated  in  any  way  that  she  was  mortgaged  to  another,  and 
no  one — so  far  as  I  could  see,  was  more  in  her  favor  than 
I,  hence  I  was  not  entirely  to  blame  in  the  case.  My 
inferences  were  logical.  So  far  as  her  words  and  actions 
were  concerned  I  was  justified  in  my  hope  that  she  might 
consent. 

However,  regarding  Lorado's  warning  as  final  I  turned  to 
another  and  wholly  different  investment  of  the  cash  with 
which  my  new  contract  had  embarrassed  me.  I  decided  to 
go  to  England. 

For  several  years  my  friends  in  London  had  been  sug 
gesting  that  I  visit  them  and  I  had  a  longing  to  do  so.  I 
wanted  to  see  Barrie,  Shaw,  Hardy,  Besant,  and  other  of 
my  kindly  correspondents  and  this  seemed  my  best  time 
to  make  the  journey. 

Rose  of  Butcher's  Coolly  had  won  for  me  many  English 
friends.  Henry  James  had  reviewed  it,  Barrie  had  writ 
ten  to  me  in  praise  of  it  and  Stead  had  republished  it  in  a 

83 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

cheap  edition  which  had  gained  a  wide  circle  of  readers. 
"In  going  abroad  now  I  shall  be  going  among  friends,"  I 
said  to  Fuller  who  was  my  confidant,  as  usual. 

Henry  James  in  a  long  and  intimate  letter  had  said,  "It 
is  high  time  for  you  to  visit  England.  I  shall  take  great 
pleasure  in  having  you  for  a  week-end  here  at  Old  Rye" — 
and  a  re-reading  of  this  letter  tipped  the  scale.  I  took  the 
train  for  Wisconsin  to  see  nry  mother  and  prepare  her  for 
my  immediate  trip  to  London. 

Dear  soul!  She  was  doubly  deeply  disappointed,  for  I 
not  only  failed  to  bring  assurance  of  a  new  daughter,  I 
came  with  an  avowal  of  desertion  in  my  mouth.  Pathetic 
ally  counting  on  my  spending  the  summer  with  her,  she 
must  now  be  told  that  I  was  about  to  sail  for  the  Old 
World! 

It  was  not  a  happy  home-coming.  I  acknowledged  my 
self  to  be  a  base,  unfilial,  selfish  wretch,  "and  yet — if  I  am 
ever  to  see  London  now  is  my  time.  Each  year  my  mother 
will  be  older,  feebler.  The  sooner  I  make  the  crossing  the 
safer  for  us  all.  Furthermore  I  am  no  longer  young — and 
just  now  with  Barrie,  Shaw,  Zangwill,  Doyle  and  Henry 
James,  England  will  be  hospitable  to  me.  The  London  Mac- 
millans  are  to  bring  out  my  books  and  so — 

Mother  consented  at  last,  tearfully,  begging  me  not  to 
stay  long  and  to  write  often,  to  which  I  replied,  "You  may 
count  on  me  in  July.  I  shall  only  be  gone  three  months — 
four  at  the  outside.  I  shall  send  Frank  to  stay  with  you — • 
and  I  shall  write  every  day." 

Just  before  coming  to  West  Salem  (with  a  feeling  of 
guilt  in  my  heart)  I  had  purchased  a  mechanical  piano  in 
the  hope  that  it  would  cheer  her  lonely  hours,  and  as  this 
instrument  had  arrived  I  unboxed  it  and  set  it  up  in  the 
music  room,  eager  to  please  the  old  folks  to  whom  it  was 
an  amazing  contrivance. 

It  was  on  Sunday  and  Uncle  Will  came  in  together  with 

84 


The    Return    of    the    Artist 

several  of  the  neighbors,  and  while  I  manipulated  the  stops 
and  worked  the  pedals,  they  all  sat  in  silence,  marveling  at 
the  cunning  of  the  mechanism  rather  than  enjoying  "The 
Ride  of  the  Valkyries."  However  as  I  played  some  simpler 
things,  a  song  of  MacDowells,  a  study  by  Grieg,  my  Uncle's 
head  bowed,  and  on  his  face  came  that  somber  brooding  look 
which  recalled  to  me  the  moods  of  David,  his  younger 
brother,  whose  violin  had  meant  so  much  to  me  when  as 
a  boy,  I  lay  before  the  fire  and  listened  with  sweet  Celtic 
melancholy  to  the  wailing  of  its  strings. 

Something  in  these  northern  melodies  sank  deep  into 
my  mother's  inherited  memories,  also,  and  her  eyes  were 
wide  and  still  with  inward  vision,  but  my  Aunt  Susan  said, 
"That's  a  fine  invention,  but  I'd  rather  hear  you  sing,"  and 
in  this  judgment  Maria  concurred.  "It's  grand,"  she  ad 
mitted,  "but  'tain't  like  the  human  voice." 

In  the  end  I  put  the  machine  back  in  the  corner  and  sang 
for  them,  some  of  the  familiar  songs.  The  instrument  was 
surprising  and  new  and  wonderful  but  it  did  not  touch  the 
hearts  of  my  auditors  like  "Minnie  Minturn"  and  "The 
Palace  of  the  King." 

On  the  day  following  I  set  the  date  of  my  departure  and 
at  the  end  of  my  announcement  mother  sat  in  silence,  her 
face  clouded  with  pain,  her  eyes  looking  away  into  space. 
She  had  nothing  to  say  in  opposition,  not  a  word — she 
only  said,  "If  you're  going  I  guess  the  quicker  you  stari 
the  better." 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 
London    and     Evening    Dress 

CONFESSION  must  now  be  made  on  a  personal  matter 
of  capital  importance.  Up  to  my  thirty-ninth  year  I 
had  never  worn  a  swallow-tail  evening  coat,  and  the  ques 
tion  of  conforming  to  a  growing  sartorial  custom  was  be 
coming,  each  day,  of  more  acute  concern  to  my  friends  as 
well  as  to  myself. 

My  first  realization  of  the  differences  which  the  lack  of 
evening  dress  can  make  in  a  man's  career,  came  upon  me 
clearly  during  the  social  stir  of  the  Columbian  Exposition, 
for  throughout  my  ten  years'  stay  in  Boston  I  had  accepted 
(with  serene  unconsciousness  of  the  incongruity  of  my  ac 
tion)  the  paradoxical  theory  that  a  "Prince  Albert  frock 
coat"  was  the  proper  holiday  or  ceremonial  garment  of  an 
American  democrat.  The  claw-hammer  suit  was  to  me,  as 
to  my  fellow  artist,  "the  livery  of  privilege"  worn  only  by 
monopolistic  brigands  and  the  poor  parasites  who  fawned 
upon  and  served  them,  whereas  the  double-breasted  black 
coat,  royal,  as  its  name  denoted,  was  associated  in  my  mind 
with  judges,  professors,  senators  and  doctors  of  divinity. 

It  was,  moreover,  a  dignified  and  logical  garment.  It 
clothed  with  equal  charity  a  man's  stomach  and  his  stern. 
Generous  of  its  skirts,  which  went  far  to  conceal  wrinkled 
trousers,  it  could  be  worn  with  a  light  tie  at  a  formal  dinner 
or  with  a  dark  tie  at  a  studio  tea,  and  was  equally  appropri 
ate  at  a  funeral  or  a  wedding.  For  all  these  several  reasons 
it  remained  the  uniform  of  professional  men  throughout 

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London    and    Evening    Dress 

the  Middle  Border.  From  my  earliest  childhood  it  had  been 
my  ideal  of  manly  elegance.  Even  in  New  York  I  had  kept 
pretty  close  to  the  social  level  where  it  was  still  accepted. 

The  World's  Fair  in  '93,  however,  had  not  only  brought 
to  Chicago  many  of  the  discriminating  social  customs  of  the 
East,  but  also  many  distinguished  guests  from  the  old  world 
to  whom  dress  was  a  formal,  almost  sacred  routine.  To 
meet  these  noble  aliens,  we,  the  artists  and  writers  of  the 
city,  were  occasionally  invited;  and  the  question  "Shall  we 
conform"  became  ever  more  pressing  in  its  demand  for  final 
settlement.  One  by  one  my  fellows  had  deserted  from  the 
ranks  and  were  reported  as  rubbing  shoulders  with  pluto 
crats  in  their  great  dining-rooms  or  escorting  ladies  into 
gilded  reception  parlors,  wearing  garments  which  had  no 
relationship  to  learning,  or  art,  or  law,  as  I  had  been  taught 
to  believe.  Lorado  Taft,  Oliver  Dennett  Grover,  and  even 
Henry  Fuller  had  gone  over  to  the  shining  majority,  leaving 
me  almost  alone  in  stubborn  support  of  the  cylindrical  coat. 

To  surrender  was  made  very  difficult  for  me  by  Eugene 
Field,  who  had  publicly  celebrated  me  as  "the  sturdy  op 
ponent  of  the  swallow-tail  suit,"  and  yet  he  himself,— 
though  still  outwardly  faithful — had  been  heard  to  say,  "I 
may  be  forced  to  wear  the  damned  thing  yet!' 

In  all  this  I  felt  the  wind  of  social  change.  That  I  stood 
at  the  parting  of  the  ways  was  plain  to  me.  To  continue 
on  my  present  line  of  march  would  be  to  have  as  exemplars 
Walt  Whitman,  Joaquin  Miller,  John  Burroughs  and  other 
illustrious  non-conformists  to  whom  long  beards,  easy  col 
lars,  and  short  coats  were  natural  and  becoming.  To  take 
the  other  road  was  to  follow  Lowell  and  Stedman  and 
Howells.  To  shorten  my  beard — or  remove  it  altogether, — 
to  wear  a  standing  collar,  and  attached  cuffs — to  abandon 
my  western  wide-rimmed  hat — these  and  many  other  "re 
forms"  were  involved  in  my  decision.  Do  you  wonder  that 
I  hesitated? 

87 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

That  I  was  being  left  out  of  many  delightful  dinners  and 
receptions  had  been  painfully  evident  to  me  for  several 
years,  but  the  consideration  which  had  most  weight  with 
me,  at  this  time,  was  expressed  by  one  of  my  friends  who 
bluntly  declared  that  all  the  desirable  young  women  of  my 
acquaintance  not  only  adored  men  in  evening  dress  but 
ridiculed  those  of  us  who  went  about  at  all  hours  of  the  day 
and  night  in  "solemn,  shiny,  black  frocks."  I  perceived 
that  unless  I  paid  a  little  more  attention  to  tailors  and 
barbers  and  haberdashers  my  chances  for  bringing  a  new 
daughter  to  my  mother  were  dishearteningly  remote.  Se 
cretly  alarmed  and  meditating  a  shameful  surrender,  I  was 
held  in  check  by  the  thought  of  the  highly  involved  system 
of  buttons,  ties,  gloves,  hats,  and  shoes  with  which  I  would 
be  called  upon  to  wrestle. 

Zangwill,  to  whom  I  confided  my  perplexity,  bluntly  ad 
vised  me  to  conform.  "In  truth,"  said  he,  "the  steel  pen 
suit  is  the  most  democratic  of  garments.  It  renders  the 
poor  author  indistinguishable  from  the  millionaire." 

As  usual  I  referred  the  problem  to  Howells.  After  ex 
plaining  that  I  had  in  mind  a  plan  to  visit  England  I  said, 
"Every  one  but  John  Burroughs  says  I  must  get  into  the 
swallow-tail  coat;  and  I  will  confess  that  even  here  in  New 
York  I  am  often  embarrassed  by  finding  myself  the  only 
man  in  a  frock  suit  at  a  dinner." 

Howells  smiled  and  with  delightful  humor  and  that  pre 
cision  of  phrase  which  made  him  my  joy  and  my  despair, 
answered,  "My  dear  fellow,  why  don't  you  make  your  pro 
posed  visit  to  England,  buy  your  evening  suit  there  and  on 
your  return  to  Chicago  plead  the  inexorability  of  English 
social  usages?" 

He  had  pointed  the  way  out.  "By  George,  I'll  do  just 
that,"  I  declared,  vastly  elated. 

In  this  account  of  my  hesitations  I  am  still  the  historian. 
In  stating  my  case  I  am  stating  the  perplexities  of  thou- 

88 


London    and    Evening    Dress 

sands  of  my  fellow  citizens  of  the  Middle  Border.  It  has 
its  humorous  phases — this  reversal  of  social  habit  in  me, 
but  it  also  has  wide  significance.  My  surrender  was  coinci 
dent  with  similar  changes  of  thought  in  millions  of  other 
young  men  throughout  the  West.  It  was  but  another  in 
dication  that  the  customs  of  the  Border  were  fading  to  a 
memory,  and  that  Western  society,  which  had  long  been 
dominated  by  the  stately  figures  of  the  minister  and  the 
judge,  was  on  its  way  to  adopt  the  manners  and  customs  of 
the  openly-derided  but  secretly  admired  "four  hundred." 

Having  decided  on  my  sailing  date  I  asked  Howells  for 
a  few  letters  of  introduction  to  English  authors. 

He  surprised  me  by  saying,  "I  have  very  few  acquain 
tances  in  England  but  I  will  do  what  I  can  for  you." 

At  the  moment  of  embarkation  I  disappointed  myself  by 
remaining  quite  calm.  Even  when  the  great  ship  began  to 
heave  and  snort  and  slide  away  from  the  wharf  I  experi 
enced  no  thrill — it  was  not  till  an  hour  or  two  later,  as  I 
stood  on  the  forward  deck,  watching  the  sun  go  down  over 
the  tumbling  spread  of  water,  which  had  something  of  the 
majesty  I  had  known  in  the  prairies,  that  I  became  exalted. 
The  vast  expanse  seemed  strangely  like  an  appalling  desert 
and  lifting  my  eyes  to  the  cloudy  horizon  line  I  could  al 
most  imagine  myself  back  on  the  rocks  of  Walpi  overlook 
ing  the  Navajo  reservation. 

In  a  letter  to  my  mother  I  gave  the  story  of  my  trip. 
"Feeling  a  bit  queer  along  about  nine  o'clock  I  went  to  my 
state  room. — When  I  came  on  deck  the  next  time,  my  eyes 
rested  upon  the  green  hills  of  Ireland! — I  am  certain  the 
ship's  restaurant  realized  the  highest  possible  profit  in  my 
case  for  I  remember  but  two  meals,  one  as  we  were  leaving 
Sandy  Hook,  the  other  as  we  signaled  Queenstown.  It  may 
be  that  I  imbibed  a  bowl  of  soup  in  the  interim, — I  cer 
tainly  swallowed  a  great  many  doses  of  several  kinds  of 
medicine.  The  ship's  doctor  declared  me  to  be  the  worst 

89 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

sailor  he  had  even  known  in  all  his  thirty  years'  experience, 
— so  much  of  distinction  I  may  definitely  claim." 

In  the  dark  hours  of  that  interminable  week,  I  went  over 
my  trail  into  the  Skeena  Valley  during  the  previous  May, 
with  retrospective  delight.  In  contrast  to  these  endless 
days  of  lonely  misery  in  my  ship  bed  those  weeks  of  rain 
and  mud  and  mosquitoes  became  a  joyous  outing.  So  far 
from  giving  any  thought  to  problems  of  dress  or  social  inter 
course  I  was  only  interested  in  reaching  land — any  land. 

"In  two  minutes  after  I  landed  at  Liverpool  I  was  per 
fectly  well,"  I  wrote  to  my  mother.  "The  touch  of  solid 
earth  under  my  feet  instantly  restored  my  sanity.  My 
desire  to  live  returned.  In  an  hour  I  was  aboard  one  of  the 
quaint  little  coaches  of  the  Midland  Express  and  on  my 
way  to  London. 

"Lush  meadows,  flecked  with  fat  red  cattle  feeding  be 
side  slow  streams;  broad  lawns  rising  to  wooded  hills,  on 
which  many-towered  gray  buildings  rose;  sudden  thick- 
walled  towns;  factories,  winding  streams,  noble  trees,  and 
finally  a  yellow  mist  and  London! 

"I  am  at  a  small  inn,  near  the  Terminal  Hotel.  I  ate  my 
dinner  last  night  surrounded  by  English  people.  With 
brain  still  pulsing  with  the  motion  of  the  sea,  I  went  to  my 
bed,  rejoicing  to  feel  around  me  the  solid  stone  walls  of 
this  small  but  ancient  hotel." 

After  a  long  walk  in  search  of  my  publishers  I  was  repaid 
by  finding  several  letters  awaiting  me,  and  among  them 
was  one  from  Zangwill,  who  wrote,  "Come  at  once  to  my 
house.  I  have  a  message  for  you." 

His  address  was  almost  as  quaint  in  my  ear  as  that  of 
Sir  Walter  Besant,  which  was  Frognals  End — or  something 
like  it,  but  I  found  it  at  last  on  the  way  to  'Ampstead  'Eath. 
The  house  was  a  modest  one  but  his  study  was  made  cheery 
by  a  real  fire  of  "coals,"  and  many  books. 

He  greeted  me  heartily  and  said,  "I  have  an  invitation 

oo 


London    and    Evening    Dress 

for  you  to  the  Authors'  Society  Dinner  which  comes  next 
week.  It  will  be  what  you  would  call  'a  big  round-up'  and 
you  can't  afford  to  miss  it.  You  must  go  at  once  and  order 
that  evening  suit." 

The  idea  of  the  dinner  allured  me  but  I  shuffled,  "Can't 
I  go  as  I  am?" 

"Certainly  not.    It  is  a  full-dress  affair." 

I  argued,  "But  George  Bernard  Shaw  is  reported  to  be 
without  the  dress  suit." 

"Yes,"  admitted  Zangwill,  "Shaw  goes  everywhere  in 
tweeds,  but  then  he  is  Shaw,  and  can  afford  to  do  as  he 
pleases.  You  will  not  see  him  at  this  dinner.  He  seldom 
goes  to  such  functions." 

With  a  shudder  I  plunged.  "I'll  do  it!  If  I  must  sur 
render,  let  it  be  on  a  grand  occasion  like  this.  I  am  in 
your  hands." 

Zangwill  was  highly  amused.  "We  will  go  at  once. 
That  suit  must  be  ready  for  the  dinner  which  comes  on 
Thursday.  There's  not  a  moment  to  spare.  The  cow-boy 
must  be  tamed." 

My  hesitation  may  seem  comical  to  my  reader  as  it  did 
to  Zangwill,  but  I  really  stood  in  deep  dread  of  the  change. 
The  thought  of  bulging  shirt  fronts,  standing  collars,  var 
nished  shoes  and  white  ties  appalled  me.  With  especial 
hatred  and  timidity  I  approached  the  cylindrical  hat,  which 
was  so  wide  a  departure  from  my  sombrero. — Nevertheless 
decision  had  been  taken  out  of  my  hands!  With  wry  face 
I  followed  my  guide. 

In  most  unholy  glee  Zangwill  stood  looking  on  whilst  I 
was  being  measured.  "This  is  the  beginning  of  your  moral 
debacle,"  said  he.  "What  will  they  say  of  you  in  Wiscon 
sin,  when  they  hear  of  your  appearance  at  an  English  dinner 
wearing  'the  livery  of  the  oppressor'?" 

I  made  no  reply  to  these  questions,  but  I  felt  like  the 
traitor  he  reported  me  to  be. 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

However,  being  in  so  far  I  decided  to  go  clean  through.  I 
bought  a  white  tie,  some  high  collars,  two  pairs  of  gloves 
and  a  folding  opera  hat.  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  the 
point  of  wearing  a  high  hat  in  the  day  time  (that  was 
almost  too  much  of  a  change  from  my  broad  brim),  al 
though  my  Prince  Albert  Frock,  which  I  wore  morning, 
noon,  and  night,  was  in  conformity  with  English  custom. 
Even  the  clerks  were  so  attired. 

Meanwhile.  Zangwill's  study  was  the  only  warm  place  in 
London — so  far  as  I  knew.  His  glowing  fire  of  hard  coal 
was  a  powerful  lure,  and  I  was  often  there,  reacting  to  the 
warmth  of  his  rug  like  a  chilled  insect.  On  his  hearth  I 
thawed  into  something  like  good  humor,  and  with  his  knowl 
edge  of  American  steam  heat  he  was  fitted  to  understand 
my  vocal  delight. 

From  my  Strand  hotel  I  set  out  each  morning,  riding 
about  the  city  on  the  tops  of  'buses  and  in  this  way  soon 
got  "the  lay  of  the  land."  I  was  able  to  find  Piccadilly 
Circus,  Trafalgar  Square,  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  and  a 
few  other  landmarks  of  this  character.  I  spent  a  week  or 
more,  roaming  about  the  old  city,  searching  out,  as  most 
Americans  do,  the  literary,  the  historic.  I  wanted  to  see 
the  Tower,  "The  Cheshire  Cheese,"  and  the  Law  Courts 
of  the  Temple.  The  modern  London,  which  was  almost  as 
ugly  as  Chicago,  did  not  interest  me  at  all. 

Between  "try-ons"  of  the  new  suit  I  began  to  meet  the 
men  I  was  most  interested  in.  I  lunched  with  James 
Barrie  and  called  upon  Bret  Harte,  Sir  Walter  Besant  and 
Thomas  Hardy.  Bernard  Shaw  wrote  asking  me  to  Hind- 
head  for  a  week-end,  and  Conan  Doyle  invited  me  to  see  a 
cricket  match  with  him — but  all  these  events  were  subordi 
nate  to  the  authors'  dinner  and  the  accursed  suit  in  which 
I  was  about  to  lose  my  identity.  "My  shirt  will  'buckle/ 
my  shoes  will  hurt  my  feet,  my  tie  will  slip  up  over  my 

collar — I  shall  take  cold  in  my  chest "  (As  a  hardened 

92 


London    and    Evening    Dress 

diner-out  I  look  back  with  wonder  and  a  certain  incredul 
ity  on  that  uneasy  week.) 

These  were  a  few  of  the  fears  I  entertained,  but  on  the 
fateful  night — an  hour  before  the  time  to  start  out,  I 
assumed  the  whole  "outfit"  and  viewed  myself  as  best  I 
could  in  my  half-length  mirror  and  was  gratified  to  note 
that  I  resembled  almost  any  other  brown-bearded  man  of 
forty.  I  couldn't  see  my  feet  and  legs  in  the  glass,  but  my 
patent  leather  shoes  were  illustrious.  I  began  to  think  I 
might  pull  through  without  accident. 

Zangwill  with  a  mischievous  grin  on  his  face,  met  me  at 
the  door  of  the  hotel  at  seven,  and  conducted  me  to  the 
reception  hall  which  was  already  filled  with  a  throng  of 
most  distinguished  guests  running  from  Sir  Walter  Besant, 
the  president  of  the  Authors'  Society,  to  Lord  Rosebery, 
who  was  to  be  one  of  the  speakers.  Zangwill,  who  seemed  to 
be  known  of  everybody,  kept  me  in  hand,  introducing  me  to 
many  of  the  writers,  and  kind  Sir  Walter  said,  "As  an  Ameri 
can  over-seas  member  your  seat  is  at  the  speakers'  table" — 
an  honor  which  I  accepted  with  a  swift  realization  that  it 
was  made  possible  by  the  new  coat  and  vest  I  presented  to 
the  world. 

Zangwill  parted  with  me,  smilingly.  "I  am  but  one  of 
lower  orders,"  said  he,  "but  I  shall  have  an  eye  to  you 
during  dinner." 

My  left-hand  neighbor  at  the  table  was  a  short,  gray, 
gloomy  individual  whose  name  I  failed  to  catch,  but  the 
man  on  my  right  was  Henry  Norman,  of  the  London  Chron 
icle,  and  after  we  had  established  friendly  relations  I  leaned 
to  him  and  whispered,  "Who  is  the  self-absorbed,  gloomy 
chieftain  on  my  left?" 

"That,"  said  he,  "is  Henry  M.  Stanley." 

"What!"  I  exclaimed,  "not  Henry  M.  Stanley  of  Africa?" 

"Yes,  Stanley  of  Uganda." 

It  seemed  a  pity  to  sit  in  silence  beside  this  great  ex- 

93 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

plorer,  who  had  been  one  of  my  boyish  heroes,  and  I  de 
cided  to  break  the  ice  of  his  reserve  in  some  way.  Turning 
to  him  suddenly  I  asked,  "Sir  Henry,  how  do  you  pro 
nounce  the  name  of  that  poisonous  African  fly — is  it  Teetsie 
or  Tettsie?" 

He  brightened  up  at  once.  I  was  not  so  great  a  bore  as 
he  feared.  After  he  had  given  me  a  great  deal  of  infor 
mation  about  this  fly,  and  the  sleeping  sickness,  I  asked  him 
what  he  thought  of  the  future  of  the  continent,  to  which  he 
responded  with  growing  geniality.  We  were  off! 

After  a  proper  interval  I  volunteered  some  valuable  data 
concerning  the  mosquitoes  and  flies  I  had  encountered  on 
my  recent  trip  into  the  wilderness  of  British  Columbia. 
He  became  interested  in  me.  "Oh!  You've  been  to  the 
Klondike!" 

This  quite  broke  down  his  wall.  Thereafter  he  listened 
respectfully  to  all  that  I  could  tell  him  of  the  black  flies, 
the  huge  caribou  flies,  the  orange-colored  flies,  and  the 
mosquitoes  who  worked  in  two  shifts  (the  little  gray  ones 
in  hot  sunlight,  the  big  black  ones  at  night),  and  by  the 
time  the  speaking  began  we  were  on  the  friendliest  terms. 
"What  a  bore  these  orators  are!"  I  said,  and  in  this  judg 
ment  he  instantly  agreed. 

Sitting  there  in  the  faces  of  hundreds  of  English  authors, 
I  achieved  a  peaceful  satisfaction  with  my  outfit.  A  sense 
of  being  entirely  inconspicuous,  a  realization  that  I  was 
committed  to  convention,  produced  in  me  an  air  of  perfect 
ease.  By  conforming  I  had  become  as  much  a  part  of  the 
scene  as  Sir  Walter  or  the  waiter  who  shifted  my  plates  and 
filled  my  glass.  "Zangwill  is  right,"  I  said,  "the  claw 
hammer  coat  is  in  truth  the  most  democratic  of  garments." 

It  pleased  me  also  to  dwell  upon  the  fact  that  the  moment 
of  my  capitulation  had  been  made  glorious  by  a  meeting 
with  Stanley  and  Hardy  and  Barrie,  and  that  the  dinner 
which  marked  this  most  important  change  in  lifelong  habits 
of  dress  was  appropriately  notable.  That  several  hundred  of 

94 


London    and    Evening    Dress 

the  best  known  men  and  women  of  England  had  witnessed 
my  fall  softened  the  shock,  and  when — on  the  way  out — 
Zangwill  nudged  my  elbow  and  said,  " Cow-boy,  you  wore 
'em  to  the  manner  born,"  I  smiled  in  lofty  disregard  of 
future  comment.  I  faced  Chicago  and  New  York  with 
serene  and  confident  composure. 

Although  I  carried  this  suit  with  me  to  Bernard  Shaw's 
(on  a  week-end  visit),  I  was  not  called  upon  to  wear  it,  for 
he  met  me  in  snuff-colored  knickerbockers  and  did  not 
change  to  any  other  suit  during  my  stay.  Sunday  dinner 
at  Conan  Doyle's  was  a  midday  meal,  and  Barrie  and 
Hardy  and  other  of  my  literary  friends  I  met  at  teas  or 
luncheons.  I  took  my  newly-acquired  uniform  to  Paris  but 
as  my  meetings  with  my  French  friends  were  either  teas 
or  lunches,  it  so  happened  that — eager  as  I  was  to  display  it 
I  did  not  put  this  suit  on  till  after  I  reached  home.  My 
first  appearance  in  it  was  in  the  nature  of  a  masquerade, 
my  second  was  by  way  of  a  joke  to  please  my  mother. 

Knowing  that  she  had  never  seen  a  man  in  evening  dress 
I  arrayed  myself,  one  night,  as  if  for  a  banquet,  and  sud 
denly  descended  upon  her  with  intent  to  surprise  and  amuse 
her.  I  surprised  her  but  I  did  not  make  her  laugh  in  the 
way  I  had  expected.  On  the  contrary  she  surveyed  me  with 
a  look  of  pride  and  then  quietly  remarked,  "I  like  you  in 
it.  I  wouldn't  mind  if  you  dressed  that  way  every  day." 

This  finished  my  opposition  to  the  swallow-tail  coat.  If 
my  mother,  the  daughter  of  a  pioneer,  a  woman  of  the 
farm,  accepted  it  as  something  appropriate  to  her  son,  its 
ultimate  acceptance  by  all  America  was  inevitable.  There 
after  I  lay  in  wait  for  an  opportunity  to  display  myself  in 
all  my  London  finery. 


Two  months  later  as  I  was  mounting  the  central  staircase 
of  the  Chicago  Art  Institute,  on  my  way  to  the  Annual  Re 
ception,  I  met  two  of  my  fellow  republicans  in  Prince  Albert 

95 


A   Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

Frock  suits.  At  sight  of  me  they  started  with  surprise — 
surprise  and  sorrow — exclaiming,  "Look  at  Harnlin  Gar 
land!"  Assuming  an  expression  of  patrician  ease,  I  replied, 
"Oh,  yes,  I  have  conformed.  In  London  one  must  conform, 
you  know. — The  English  are  quite  inexorable  in  all  matters 
of  dress,  you  understand." 

Howells,  when  I  saw  him  next,  smilingly  listened  to  my 
tale  and  heartily  approved  of  my  action,  but  Burroughs 
regarded  it  as  a  weak  surrender.  "A  silk  hat  and  steel-pen 
coat  on  a  Whitman  Democrat,"  he  said,  "seems  like  a  make- 
believe,"  which,  in  a  sense,  it  was. 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 

The    Choice    of    the    New    Daughter 

\  LTHOUGH  my  mother  met  me  each  morning  with  a 
JL\  happy  smile,  she  walked  with  slower  movement,  and 
in  studying  her  closely,  after  three  months'  absence,  I 
perceived  unwelcome  change.  She  was  not  as  alert  men 
tally  or  physically  as  when  I  went  away.  A  mysterious 
veil  had  fallen  between  her  wistful  spirit  and  the  outer 
world.  Her  vision  was  dimmer  and  her  spirit  at  times 
withdrawn,  remote.  She  laughed  in  response  to  my  jesting, 
but  there  was  an  absent-minded  sweetness  in  her  smile,  a 
tremulous  quality  in  her  voice  which  disturbed  me. 

Her  joy  in  my  return,  so  accusing  in  its  tenderness,  led 
me  to  declare  that  I  would  never  again  leave  her,  not  even 
for  a  month.  "You  may  count  on  me  hereafter,"  I  said  to 
her.  "I'm  going  to  quit  traveling  and  settle  down  near 
you." 

"I  hope  you  mean  it  this  time,"  she  replied  soberly,  and 
her  words  stung  for  I  recalled  the  many  times  I  had  dis 
appointed  her. 

With  a  mass  of  work  and  correspondence  waiting  my 
hand  I  went  from  my  breakfast  to  my  study.  My  fore 
noons  thereafter  were  spent  at  my  desk,  but  with  the  under 
standing  that  if  she  got  lonesome,  mother  was  privileged  to 
interrupt,  and  it  often  happened  that  along  about  eleven 
I  would  hear  a  softly-opened  stair-door  and  then  a  call, — a 
timid  call  as  if  she  feared  to  disturb  me — "Haven't  you 
done  enough?  Can't  you  come  now?"  There  was  no 
resisting  this  appeal.  Dropping  my  pen,  I  went  below  and 
gave  the  rest  of  my  day  to  her. 

97 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

We  possessed  an  ancient  low-hung  "Surrey,"  a  vehicle 
admirably  fitted  for  an  invalid,  and  in  this  conveyance  with 
a  stout  mare  as  motive  power  we  often  drove  away  into  the 
country  of  a  pleasant  afternoon,  sometimes  into  Gill's 
Coulee,  sometimes  to  Onalaska. 

On  these  excursions  my  mother  rode  in  silence,  busied 
with  the  past.  Each  hill,  each  stream  had  its  tender  asso 
ciation.  Once  as  we  were  crossing  the  Kinney  Hill  she  said, 
"We  used  to  pick  plums  along  that  creek."  Or  again  as 
we  were  driving  toward  Mindora,  she  said,  "When  Mc- 
Eldowney  built  that  house  we  thought  it  a  palace." 

She  loved  to  visit  her  brother  William's  farm,  and  to  ride 
past  the  old  McClintock  house  in  which  my  father  had 
courted  her.  Her  expression  at  such  times  was  sweetly 
sorrowful.  The  past  appeared  so  happy,  so  secure,  her 
present  so  precarious,  so  full  of  pain.  She  sensed  the  mys 
tery,  the  tragedy  of  human  life,  but  was  unable  to  express 
her  conceptions, — and  I  was  of  no  value  as  a  comforter. 
I  could  only  jest  with  a  bitter  sense  of  helplessness. 

On  other  days,  when  she  was  not  well  enough  to  drive,  I 
pushed  her  about  the  village  in  a  wheeled  chair,  which  I 
had  bought  at  the  World's  Fair.  In  this  way  she  was  able 
to  make  return  calls  upon  such  of  her  neighbors  as  were 
adjacent  to  side-walks.  She  was  always  in  my  thought, — 
only  when  Franklin  took  her  in  charge  was  it  possible  for 
me  to  concentrate  on  the  story  which  I  had  begun  before 
going  abroad,  and  in  which  I  hoped  to  embody  some  of  the 
experiences  of  my  trip.  Boy  Life  on  the  Prairie  was  also 
still  incomplete,  and  occasionally  I  put  aside  The  Hustler, 
as  I  called  my  fiction,  in  order  to  recover  and  record  some 
farm  custom,  some  pioneer  incident  which  my  mother  or 
my  brother  brought  to  my  mind  as  we  talked  of  early  days 
in  Iowa. 

The  story  (which  Gilder  afterward  called  Her  Mountain 
Lover)  galloped  along  quite  in  the  spirit  of  humorous  ex- 

98 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

travaganza  with  which  it  had  been  conceived,  and  I  thor 
oughly  enjoyed  doing  it  for  the  reason  that  in  it  I  was  able 
to  relive  some  of  the  noblest  moments  of  my  explorations 
of  Colorado's  peaks  and  streams.  It  was  an  expression  of 
my  indebtedness  to  the  High  Country. 

I  made  the  mistake,  however,  of  not  using  the  actual 
names  of  localities.  Just  why  I  shuffled  the  names  of  trails 
and  towns  and  valleys  so  recklessly,  I  cannot  now  explain, 
for  there  was  abundant  literary  precedent  for  their  proper 
and  exact  use.  Perhaps  I  resented  the  prosaic  sound  of 
"Sneffles"  and  "Montrose  Junction."  Anyhow,  whatever 
my  motive,  I  covered  my  tracks  so  well  that  it  was  impos 
sible  even  for  a  resident  to  follow  me.  In  The  Eagle's 
Heart  I  was  equally  elusive,  but  as  only  part  of  that  book 
referred  to  the  High  Country  the  lack  of  definite  nomen 
clature  did  not  greatly  matter. 

Personally  I  like  Her  Mountain  Lover,  which  is  still  in 
print,  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  possible  reader  of  it,  I  will 
explain  that  the  "Wagon  Wheel  Gap"  of  the  story  is 
Ouray,  and  that  the  Grizzly  Bear  Trail  leads  off  the  stage 
road  to  Red  Mountain. 

Our  red  raspberries  were  just  coming  into  fruit,  and  a 
few  strawberries  remained  on  the  vines,  therefore  it  hap 
pened  that  during  the  season  we  had  a  short-cake  with 
cream  and  sugar  almost  every  night  for  supper, — and  such 
short-cakes! — piping  hot,  buttered,  smothered  in  berries. 
I  fear  they  were  not  very  healthful  either  for  my  mother 
or  for  her  sons,  but  as  short-cakes  were  an  immemorial 
delicacy  in  our  home  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  forbid 
them. 

Mother  insisted  on  them  all  the  more  firmly  when  I  told 
her  that  the  English  knew  nothing  of  short-cake  or  our 
kind  of  pies,  and  then,  more  to  amuse  her  than  for  any 
other  reason,  I  told  of  a  visit  to  my  English  publisher  and 
of  my  bragging  about  her  short-cake  so  shamelessly  that  he 

99 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

had  finally  declared:  "I  am  coming  to  Chicago  next  year, 
and  I  shall  journey  all  the  way  to  West  Salem  just  to  test 
your  mother's  short-cake." 

This  made  her  chuckle.  "Let  him  come,"  she  said  con 
fidently.  "We'll  feed  him  on  it." 

Notwithstanding  her  reaction  to  my  jesting,  my  anxiety 
concerning  her  deepened.  The  long  periods  of  silence  into 
which  she  fell  alarmed  me,  and  at  times,  as  she  sat  alone,  I 
detected  on  her  face  an  expression  of  pain  which  was  like 
that  of  one  in  despair.  When  I  questioned  her,  she  could 
not  define  the  cause  of  her  distress,  but  I  feared  it  came 
from  some  weakening  of  her  heart. 

She  was  failing, — that  was  all  too  evident  to  me — failing 
faster  than  her  years  warranted,  and  then  (just  as  I  was 
becoming  a  little  reassured)  she  came  to  me  one  morning, 
with  both  her  hands  outstretched,  as  if  feeling  her  way,  her 
face  white,  her  eyes  wide  and  deep  and  dark  with  terror. 
"I  can't  see!  I  can't  see!"  she  wailed. 

With  a  sense  of  impending  tragedy  I  took  her  in  my 
arms  and  led  her  to  a  chair.  "Don't  worry,  mother!"  was 
all  I  could  say.  "It  will  pass  soon.  Keep  perfectly  quiet." 

Under  the  influence  of  my  words  she  gradually  lost  her 
fear,  and  by  the  time  the  doctor  arrived  she  was  quite 
calm  and  could  see — a  little — though  in  a  strange  way. 

In  answer  to  his  question  she  replied  with  a  pitiful  little 
smile,  "Yes,  I  can  see  you,  but  only  in  pieces.  I  can  only 
see  a  part  of  your  face,— the  rest  of  you  is  all  black." 

This  reply  seemed  to  relieve  the  doctor's  mind.  His 
face  lighted  up.  "I  understand!  Don't  worry  a  mite.  You 
will  be  all  right  in  a  few  minutes.  It  is  only  a  temporary 
nerve  disturbance." 

This  proved  to  be  true,  and  as  her  lips  resumed  their 
placid  sweetness  my  courage  came  back.  In  a  few  hours 
she  was  able  to  see  quite  clearly,  or  at  least  as  clearly  as 
was  normal  to  her  age.  Nevertheless  I  accepted  this  attack 

100 


The    Choice    of     the    New     Daughter 

as  a  distinct  and  sinister  warning.  It  not  only  emphasized 
her  dependence  upon  me,  it  made  me  very  definitely 
aware  of  what  would  happen  to  our  household  if  she 
were  to  become  a  helpless  invalid.  Her  need  of  a 
larger  bed-chamber,  with  a  connecting  bathroom  was 
imperative. 

"I  know  you  will  both  suffer  from  the  noise  and  confusion 
of  the  building,"  I  said  to  my  aunt,  "but  I  am  going  to 
enlarge  mother's  room  and  put  in  water  and  plumbing.  If 
she  should  be  sick  in  that  small  bedroom  it  would  be 
horrible." 

Up  to  this  time  our  homestead  had  remained  simply  a 
roomy  farmhouse  on  the  edge  of  a  village.  I  now  decided 
that  it  should  have  the  conveniences  of  a  suburban  cottage, 
and  to  this  end  I  made  plans  for  a  new  dining-room,  a  new 
porch,  and  a  bath-room. 

Mother  was  appalled  at  the  audacity  of  my  designs.  She 
wanted  the  larger  chamber,  of  course,  but  my  scheme  for 
putting  in  running  water  appealed  to  her  as  something  al 
most  criminally  extravagant.  She  was  troubled,  too,  by  the 
thought  of  the  noise,  the  dirt,  the  change  which  were  neces 
sary  accompaniments  of  the  plan. 

I  did  my  best  to  reassure  her.  "It  won't  take  long, 
mother,  and  as  for  the  expense,  you  just  let  me  walk  the 
floor." 

She  said  no  more,  realizing,  no  doubt,  that  I  could  not 
be  turned  aside  from  my  purpose. 

There  were  no  bathrooms  in  West  Salem  in  1899 — the 
plumber  was  still  the  tinner,  and  when  the  news  of  my 
ambitious  designs  got  abroad  it  created  almost  as  much 
comment  as  my  brother's  tennis  court  had  roused  some  five 
years  earlier.  As  a  force  making  toward  things  high-fi-lutin, 
if  not  actually  un-American,  I  was  again  discussed.  Some 
said,  "I  can't  understand  how  Hamlin  makes  all  his  money." 
Others  remarked,  "Easy  come,  easy  go!"  Something  un- 

101 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

accountable  lay  in  the  scheme  of  my  life.  It  was  illogical, 
if  not  actually  illegal. 

"How  can  he  go  skittering  about  all  over  the  world  in 
this  way?"  asked  William  McEldowney,  and  Sam  McKinley 
said  to  my  mother,  "I  swear,  I  don't  see  how  you  and  Dick 
ever  raised  such  a  boy.  He's  a  'sport/ — that's  what  he  is, 
a  freak."  To  all  of  which  mother  answered  only  with  a 
silent  laugh. 

The  carpenters  came,  together  with  a  crew  of  stone 
masons,  and  the  old  kitchen  began  to  move  southward, 
giving  place  for  the  foundations  of  the  new  dining-room. 
By  the  end  of  the  week,  the  lawn  was  littered  with  material 
and  tools,  and  the  frame- work  was  enclosed. 

My  mother,  in  her  anxiety  to  justify  the  enormous  outlay 
said,  "Well,  anyhow,  these  improvements  are  not  entirely 
for  me,  they  will  make  the  house  all  the  nicer  for  my  New 
Daughter  when  she  comes." 

"That's  true,"  I  answered,  "I  hadn't  thought  of  that." 

"It's  time  you  thought  of  it.  You're  almost  forty  years 
old,"  she  replied  with  humorous  emphasis,  then  she  added, 
"I  begin  to  think  I  never  will  see  your  wife." 

"Just  you  wait,"  I  jestingly  replied.  "The  case  is  not  so 
hopeless  as  you  think — I  have  just  received  a  letter  which 
gives  me  a  'prospect.'  " 

I  said  this  merely  to  divert  her,  but  she  seized  upon  my 
remark  with  alarming  seriousness.  "Read  me  the  letter. 
Where  does  she  live? — Tell  me  all  about  her." 

Being  in  so  far  I  thought  it  could  do  no  harm  to  go  a 
little  farther.  I  described  (still  in  bantering  mood)  my  first 
meeting  with  Zulime  Taft  more  than  five  years  before.  I 
pictured  her  as  she  looked  to  me  then,  and  as  she  after 
ward  appeared  when  I  met  her  a  second  time  in  the  home 
of  her  sister  in  Chicago.  "I  admit  that  I  was  greatly  im 
pressed  by  her,"  I  went  on,  "but  just  when  I  had  begun  to 
hope  for  a  better  understanding,  her  brother  Lorado  chilled 

102 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

me  with  the  information  that  she  was  about  to  be  claimed 
by  another  man.  To  be  honest  about  it,  mother,  I  am  not 
sure  that  she  is  interested  in  me  even  now;  although  one  of 
her  friends  has  just  written  me  to  say  that  Lorado  was 
mistaken,  and  that  Zulime  is  not  engaged  to  any  one.  I  am 
going  down  to  visit  some  friends  at  the  camp  to  test  the 
truth  of  this;  but  don't  say  a  word  about  it,  for  my  in 
formation  may  be  wrong." 

My  warning  went  for  nothing!  My  confession  was  too 
exciting  to  be  kept  a  secret,  and  soon  several  of  mother's  most 
intimate  friends  had  heard  of  my  expedition,  and  in  their 
minds,  as  in  hers,  my  early  marriage  was  assured.  Did  not 
the  proof  of  it  lie  in  the  fact  that  I  was  pushing  my  building 
with  desperate  haste?  Was  this  not  done  in  order  to  make 
room  for  my  bride? — No  other  reason  was  sufficient  to 
account  for  the  astounding  improvements  which  I  had 
planned,  and  which  were  going  forward  with  magical  ra 
pidity. 

Of  course  no  one  could  convince  my  mother  that  her 
son's  "attractions"  might  not  prove  sufficiently  strong  to 
make  his  "prospect"  a  possibility,  for  to  her  I  was  not  only 
a  distinguished  author,  but  a  "Good  provider,"  something 
which  outweighed  literary  attainment  in  a  home  like  ours. 

She  could  not  or  would  not  speak  of  the  girl  as  "Miss 
Taft,"  but  insisted  upon  calling  her  "Zuleema,"  and  her 
mind  was  filled  with  plans  for  making  her  at  home. 

Privately  I  was  more  concerned  than  I  cared  to  show,  and 
I  would  be  giving  a  false  impression  if  I  made  light  of  my 
feeling  at  this  time.  I  spoke  to  mother  jestingly  in  order  to 
prevent  her  from  building  her  hopes  on  an  unstable  founda 
tion. 

In  the  midst  of  my  busiest  day  I  received  a  letter  from 
my  good  friends,  Wallace  and  Tillie  Heckman,  and  though 
I  was  but  a  clumsy  farmer  in  all  affairs  of  the  heart,  I  per 
ceived  enough  of  hidden  meaning  in  their  invitation  to  visit 

103 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

Eagle's  Nest,  to  give  me  pause  even  in  the  welter  of  my 
plumbing.  I  replied  at  once  accepting  their  hospitality,  and 
on  Saturday  took  the  train  for  Oregon  to  stay  over  Sunday 
at  least. 

Squire  Heckman  was  good  enough  to  meet  me  at  the 
train,  and  as  he  drove  me  up  the  hill  to  "Ganymede," 
which  was  his  summer  home,  he  said,  "You  will  breakfast 
with  us,  and  as  it  is  our  custom  to  dine  at  the  Camp  on 
Sunday  we  will  take  you  with  us  and  introduce  you  to  the 
campers,  although  most  of  them  are  known  to  you." 

Mrs.  Heckman,  who  was  cordial  in  her  welcome,  in 
formed  me  at  breakfast  that  Miss  Taft  was  the  volunteer 
stewardess  of  the  Camp.  "She  is  expecting  us  to  bring  you 
to  dinner  to-day." 

"As  one  of  the  Trustees  of  the  Foundation,  a  tour  of  in 
spection  is  a  duty,"  I  replied. 

There  was  a  faint  smile  on  Mrs.  Heckman's  demure  lips, 
but  Wallace,  astute  lawyer  that  he  was,  presented  the  bland 
face  of  a  poker  player.  Without  a  direct  word  being  spoken 
I  was  made  to  understand  that  Miss  Taft  was  not  indifferent 
to  my  coming,  and  when  at  half-past  eleven  we  started  for 
Eagle's  Nest  I  had  a  sense  of  committing  myself  to  a  peril 
ous  campaign. 

A  walk  of  half  a  mile  through  a  thick  grove  of  oaks 
brought  us  out  upon  a  lovely,  grassy  knoll,  which  rose  two 
hundred  feet  or  more  above  the  Rock  River,  and  from 
which  a  pleasing  view  of  the  valley  opened  to  the  north  as 
well  as  to  the  south.  The  camp  consisted  of  a  small  kitchen 
cabin,  a  dining  tent,  a  group  of  cabins,  and  one  or  two 
rude  studios  to  which  the  joyous  off-hand  manners  of  the 
Fine  Arts  Building  had  been  transferred.  It  was  in  fact  a 
sylvan  settlement  of  city  dwellers — a  colony  of  artists, 
writers  and  teachers  out  for  a  summer  vacation. 

In  holiday  mood  Browne,  Taft,  and  Clarkson  greeted  me 
warmly,  upbraiding  me,  however,  for  having  so  long  neg- 

104 


Miss  Zulime  Taft,  acting  as  volunteer  housekeeper  for  the  colony, 
had  charge  of  the  long  rude  table  under  the  tent-fly  to  which 
the  campers  assembled  with  the  appetites  of  harvest  hands  and 
the  gayety  of  uncalculating  youth. 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

lected  my  official  duties  as  trustee.    "We  need  your  counsel." 

Mrs.  Heckman,  laconic,  quizzical,  walked  about  "the  res 
ervation"  with  me,  and  in  her  smiling  eyes  I  detected  a  kind 
of  gentle  amusement  with  her  unconventional  neighbors. 
She  said  nothing  then  (or  at  any  time)  which  could  be 
interpreted  as  criticism,  but  a  merry  little  quirk  in  the 
corner  of  her  lip  instructed  me. 

Miss  Taft  was  not  visible.  "As  house-keeper  she  is  busy 
with  preparations  for  dinner,"  Mrs.  Heckman  explained,  and 
so  I  concealed  my  disappointment  as  best  I  could. 

At  last  at  one  o'clock,  Lorado,  as  Chief  of  the  tribe,  gave 
the  signal  for  the  feast  by  striking  a  huge  iron  bar  with  a 
hammer,  a  sound  which  brought  the  campers  from  every 
direction,  clamoring  for  food,  and  when  all  were  seated  at 
the  dining  table  beneath  a  strip  of  canvas,  some  one  asked, 
"Where's  Zuhl?" 

Browne  answered  with  blunt  humor,  "Primping!  She's 
gone  to  smooth  her  ruffled  plumage." 

A  cry  arose,  "Here  she  comes!"  and  Spencer  Fiske  the 
classical  scholar  of  the  camp  with  fervent  admiration  ex 
claimed  "By  Jove — a  veritable  Diana!" 

Browne  started  the  Toreador's  song,  and  all  began  to  beat 
upon  the  tables  with  their  spoons  in  rhythmical  clamor. 
Turning  my  head  I  perceived  the  handsome  figure  of  a  girl 
moving  with  calm  and  stately  dignity  across  the  little  lawn 
toward  the  table.  She  was  bareheaded,  and  wore  a  short- 
sleeved,  collarless  gown  of  summer  design,  but  she  carried 
herself  with  a  leisurely  and  careless  grace  which  made 
evident  the  fact  that  she  was  accustomed  to  these 
moments  of  uproar.  As  she  neared  the  tent,  however, 
I  detected  a  faint  flicker  of  amusement  in  the  lines 
about  her  mouth. 

This  entrance  so  dramatic  and  so  lovely  was  precisely  the 
kind  of  picture  to  produce  on  my  mind  a  deeply  influencing 
impression.  I  thought  her  at  the  moment  one  of  the  most 

105 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

gracious  and  admirable  women  of  my  world,  a  union  of 
European  culture  and  the  homely  grace  of  the  prairie. 

She  greeted  me  with  a  pleasant  word,  and  took  a  seat 
opposite,  making  no  reply  to  the  jocular  comment  of  her 
boarders.  It  was  evident  that  she  was  not  only  accustomed 
to  demonstrations  of  this  sort,  but  considered  them  a  neces 
sary  part  of  her  stewardship,  an  office  which  was  entirely 
without  salary — and  scantily  repaid  in  honor. 

No  complaints  about  the  scarcity  of  butter,  or  questions 
concerning  the  proportions  of  milk  in  the  cream  jug,  had 
power  to  draw  her  into  defensive  explanation.  At  last  her 
tormentors  unable  to  stampede  her  by  noise,  or  plague  her 
by  petitions,  subsided  into  silence  or  turned  to  other  mat 
ters,  and  we  all  settled  down  to  an  abundant  and  very 
jolly  dinner. 

It  was  because  the  camp  loved  Zulime  Taft  that  th?y 
could  carry  on  in  this  way.  It  was  all  studio  blague,  and 
she  knew  it  and  offered  no  defense  of  her  economies. 

Most  of  the  artists  and  writers  in  the  camp  were  already 
known  to  me.  They  were  all  of  small  income,  some  of 
them  were  almost  as  poor  as  I,  and  welcomed  a  method  by 
which  they  were  able  to  spend  a  summer  comfortably  and 
inexpensively.  A  common  kitchen,  and  an  old  white  horse 
and  wagon  also  owned  collectively,  made  it  possible  to  offer 
board  at  four  dollars  per  week! 

The  Heckman  home,  which  the  campers  called  "the  Cas 
tle,"  or  "The  Manor  House,"  a  long,  two-story  building 
of  stone  which  stood  on  the  southern  end  of  the  Bluff, 
overlooked  what  had  once  been  Black  Hawk's  Happy  Hunt 
ing  Ground.  It  was  not  in  any  sense  a  chateau,  but  it 
pleased  Wallace  Heckman 's  artist- tenants  to  call  it  so,  and 
by  contrast  with  their  cook-house  it  did,  indeed,  possess 
something  like  grandeur.  Furthermore  "the  Lord  of  the 
Manor"  added  to  the  majesty  of  his  position  by  owning 
and  driving  a  coach  (this  was  before  the  day  of  the  auto- 

106 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

mobile),  and  at  times  those  of  his  tenants  most  highly  in 
favor,  were  invited  to  a  seat  on  this  stately  vehicle. 

"Lady"  Heckman  possessed  a  piano,  another  evidence 
of  wealth,  and  the  pleasantest  part  of  my  recollections  of 
this  particular  visit  concerns  the  evenings  I  spent  with 
her  in  singing  "Belle  Mahone"  and  "Lily  Dale,"  while 
Lorado  and  his  sisters  sat  in  the  corner  and  listened — at 
least  I  infer  that  they  listened — now  that  I  grow  more 
clear  in  my  mind  I  recall  that  Tillie  Heckman  did  not 
sing,  she  only  played  for  me;  and  my  conviction  is  that  I 
sang  very  well.  I  may  be  mistaken  in  this  for  (at  times) 
I  detected  Wallace  Heckman  addressing  a  jocose  remark 
to  Miss  Taft  when  he  should  have  been  giving  his  undivided 
attention  to  my  song. 

Miss  Taft  was  accused  of  having  a  keen  relish  for  the 
fare  at  Castle  Heckman,  and  in  this  relish  I  shared  so 
frankly  that  when  Tillie  invited  me  to  stay  on  indefinitely, 
and  Wallace  suggested  that  I  might  make  the  little  pavilion 
on  the  lawn  serve  as  my  study,  I  yielded.  "Work  on  the 
homestead  must  wait,"  I  wrote  to  my  mother.  "Important 
business  here  demands  my  attention." 

Zulime  Taft  appeared  pleased  when  I  announced  my 
acceptance  of  the  Heckman  hospitality,  and  Wallace  im 
mediately  offered  me  the  use  of  his  saddle  horses  and  his 
carriage,  and  when  he  said,  "Miss  Taft  loves  to  ride,"  I  was 
convinced  not  only  of  his  friendly  interest  but  of  his  hearty 
cooperation.  Furthermore  as  Mrs.  Heckman  often  kept 
Miss  Taft  for  supper,  I  had  the  pleasant  task  of  walking 
back  to  camp  with  her. 

In  some  way  (I  never  understood  precisely  how)  the 
campers,  one  and  all,  obtained  the  notion  that  I  was  sig 
nificantly  interested  in  Miss  Taft;  but,  as  I  was  proceeding 
with  extraordinary  caution,  wearing  the  bland  expression 
of  a  Cheyenne  chieftain,  I  could  not  imagine  any  one  dis 
covering  in  my  action  anything  more  than  a  frank  liking, 

107 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

a  natural  friendship  between  the  sister  of  my  artist  comrade 
and  myself. 

It  is  true  I  could  not  entirely  conceal  the  fact  that  I 
preferred  her  company  to  that  of  any  other  of  the  girls, 
but  there  was  nothing  remarkable  in  that — nevertheless,  the 
whole  camp,  as  I  learned  afterward  (long  afterward),  was 
not  only  aware  of  my  intentions  but,  behind  my  back, 
almost  under  my  nose,  was  betting  on  my  chances.  Wagers 
were  being  offered  and  taken,  day  by  day,  as  to  whether  I 
would  win  or  lose! 

Fortunately,  nothing  of  this  disgraceful  business  reached 
me.  I  was  serenely  unconscious  of  it  all. 

Demure  as  Tillie  Heckman  looked,  slyly  humorous  as 
she  occasionally  showed  herself  to  be,  she  was  a  woman  of 
understanding,  and  from  her  I  derived  distinct  encourage 
ment.  She  not  only  indicated  her  sympathy;  she  conveyed 
to  me  her  belief  that  I  had  a  fair  chance  to  win.  I  am  not 
sure,  but  I  think  it  was  from  her  that  I  received  the  final 
statement  that  Miss  Taft  was  entirely  free.  However, 
this  did  not  clear  me  from  other  alarms,  for  on  Friday  night 
the  train  brought  Henry  Fuller  and  several  young  men 
visitors  who  were  all  quite  willing  to  walk  and  talk  with 
Miss  Taft.  It  was  only  during  the  midweek  that  I,  as  the 
only  unmarried  man  in  camp,  felt  entirely  secure. 

Henry  Fuller  stayed  on  after  the  others  went  back  to 
the  city,  and  I  would  have  been  deeply  disturbed  by 
Zulime's  keen  interest  in  him,  had  I  not  been  fully  informed 
of  their  relationship,  which  was  entirely  that  of  intellectual 
camaraderie.  Fuller  was  not  merely  a  resolved  bachelor; 
he  was  joyously  and  openly  opposed  to  any  form  of  domes 
ticity.  He  loved  his  freedom  beyond  all  else.  The 
Stewardess  knew  this  and  revelled  in  his  wit,  sharing  my 
delight  in  his  bitter  ironies.  His  verbal  inhumanities  gave 
her  joy,  because  she  didn't  believe  in  them.  They  were  all 
"literature"  to  her. 

108 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

The  weather  was  glorious  September,  and  as  my  writing 
was  going  forward,  my  companionship  ideal,  and  my  mother's 
letters  most  cheerful,  I  abandoned  myself,  as  I  had  not  done 
in  twenty  years,  to  a  complete  enjoyment  of  life.  Golden 
days!  Halcyon  days!  Far  and  sweet  and  serene  they 
seem  as  I  look  back  upon  them  from  the  present — days  to 
review  with  wistful  regret  that  I  did  not  more  fully  employ 
them  in  the  way  of  youth,  for  alas!  my  mornings  were 
spent  in  writing  when  they  should  have  been  given  to 
walking  with  my  sweetheart;  yet  even  as  I  worked  I  had 
a  sense  of  her  nearness,  and  the  knowledge  that  the  shim 
mering  summer  landscape  was  waiting  for  me  just  outside 
my  door,  comforted  me.  However,  I  was  not  wholly  neglect 
ful  of  my  opportunities.  My  afternoons  were  given  over 
to  walking  or  riding  with  her,  and  our  evenings  were  spent 
in  long  and  quiet  excursions  on  the  river  or  sitting  with  the 
artists  in  the  light  of  a  bonfire  on  the  edge  of  the  bluff, 
talking  and  singing. 

The  more  I  knew  of  Miss  Taft  the  more  her  versatility 
amazed  me.  She  could  paint,  she  could  model,  she  could 
cook  and  she  could  sew.  As  Stewardess,  she  took  charge 
of  the  marketing,  and  when  the  kitchen  fell  into  a  flutter, 
her  masterly  taste  and  skill  brought  order — and  a  delicious 
dinner — out  of  chaos.  It  remains  to  say  that,  in  addition 
to  all  these,  her  intellectual  activities,  she  held  her  own  in 
the  fierce  discussions  (concerning  Art)  which  broke  out  at 
the  table  or  raged  like  whirlwinds  on  the  moonlit  bluff — 
discussions  which  centered  around  such  questions  as  these: 
"Can  a  blue  shadow  painting  ever  be  restful?"  "Is  Local 
Color  essential  to  fiction?"  I  particularly  admired  the 
Stewardess  in  these  moments  of  controversy,  for  she  never 
lost  her  temper  or  her  point  of  view. 

Incredibly  sweet  and  peaceful  that  week  appears  as  I 
view  it  across  the  gulf  which  the  World  War  has  thrust 
between  that  year  and  this. 

109 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

We  had  no  fear  of  hunger  in  those  days,  no  dread  of 
social  unrest,  no  expectation  of  any  sudden  change.  All 
wars  were  over — in  our  opinion.  The  world  was  at  last 
definitely  at  peace,  and  we  in  America,  like  the  world  in 
general,  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  go  on  getting  richer  and 
happier,  so  happy  that  we  could  be  just.  We  were  all 
young — not  one  of  us  had  gray  hair.  Life,  for  each  of  us 
as  for  the  Nation,  moved  futureward  on  tranquil,  shining 
course,  as  a  river  slips  southward  to  the  sea,  confident, 
effortless,  and  serene.  Heavenly  skies,  how  happy  we  were! 

That  I  was  aware  in  some  degree  of  the  idyllic,  evanescent 
charm  of  those  days  is  made  certain  in  a  note  which  I  find 
in  my  diary,  the  record  of  a  walk  in  the  woods  with  Zulime. 
Her  delight  in  the  tender  loveliness  of  leaf  and  vine,  in  the 
dapple  of  sunlight  on  the  path,  I  fully  shared.  Another 
page  tells  of  a  horseback  excursion  which  we  made  across 
the  river.  She  rode  well,  very  well,  indeed,  and  her  elation, 
her  joy  in  the  motion  of  the  horse,  as  well  as  her  keen 
delight  in  the  landscape,  added  to  my  own  pleasure.  We 
stayed  to  supper  at  the  Heckmans'  that  night,  and  walked 
back  to  the  camp  at  nine,  loitering  through  the  most  magical 
light  of  the  Harvest  Moon. 

As  she  manifested  a  delightful  interest  in  what  I  was 
writing,  I  fell  into  the  habit  of  reading  to  her  some  pages 
out  of  my  new  manuscript,  in  order  that  I  might  have  the 
value  of  her  comment  on  it.  Of  course  I  expected  comment 
to  be  favorable,  and  it  was.  That  this  was  an  unfair 
advantage  to  take  of  a  nice  girl,  I  was  aware,  even  then, 
but  as  she  seemed  willing  to  listen  I  was  in  a  mood  to  be 
encouraged  by  her  smiles  and  her  words  of  praise. 

My  growing  confidence  led  to  an  enlargement  of  my 
plans  concerning  the  homestead.  "You  are  right,"  I  wrote 
to  my  mother.  "A  new  daughter  will  make  other  improve 
ments  in  the  house  absolutely  necessary.  Not  merely  a 

no 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

new  dining-room,  but  an  extra  story  must  be  added  to  the 
wing — "  And  in  the  glow  of  this  design  I  reluctantly  cut 
short  my  visit  and  returned  to  West  Salem,  to  apprise  the 
carpenters  of  the  radical  changes  in  my  design. 

Jestingly,»and  more  by  way  of  reconciling  my  mother  to 
the  renewed  noise  and  confusion  of  the  building,  I  described 
the  walks  and  rides  I  had  taken  with  Zulime,  warning  her 
at  the  same  time  not  to  enlarge  upon  these  facts.  "Miss 
Taft's  interest  may  be  only  friendliness,"  I  added. 

My  words  had  precisely  an  opposite  effect :  thereafter  she 
spoke  of  my  hopes  as  if  they  were  certainties,  and  insisted 
on  knowing  all  about  "Zuleema,"  as  she  persisted  in  calling 
Miss  Taft. 

"Now,  Mother,"  I  again  protested,  "you  must  not  talk 
that  way  to  any  of  your  callers,  for  if  you  do  you'll  get 
me  into  a  most  embarrassing  situation.  You'll  make  it 
very  hard  for  me  to  explain  in  case  of  failure." 

"You  mustn't  fail,"  she  responded  wistfully.  "I  can't 
afford  to  wait  much  longer." 

It  was  incredible  to  her  that  any  sane  girl  would  reject 
such  an  alliance,  but  I  was  very  far  from  her  proud  con 
fidence. 

In  this  doubt  of  success,  I  was  entirely  honest.  I  had 
never  presumed  on  any  manly  charm,  I  made  no  claim  to 
beauty — on  the  contrary,  I  had  always  been  keenly  aware 
of  my  rude  frame  and  clumsy  hands.  I  realized  also  my 
lack  of  nice  courtesy  and  genial  humor.  Power  I  had  (and 
relied  upon),  but  of  the  lover's  grace — nothing.  That  I 
was  a  bear  was  quite  as  evident  to  me  as  to  my  friends. 
"If  I  win  this  girl  it  must  be  on  some  other  score  than 
that  of  beauty,"  I  admitted. 

In  the  midst  of  the  bustle  and  cheer  of  this  week  another 
swift  and  sinister  cloud  descended  upon  me.  One  evening, 
as  mother  and  I  were  sitting  together,  she  fell  into  a  terrify- 

iii 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

ing  death-like  trance  from  which  I  could  not  rouse  her, 
a  condition  which  alarmed  me  so  deeply  that  I  telegraphed 
to  my  father  in  Dakota  and  to  my  brother  in  Chicago, 
telling  them  to  come  at  once.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the 
final  moment  of  our  parting  was  at  hand. 

All  through  that  night,  one  of  the  longest  I  had  ever 
known  (a  time  of  agony  and  remorse  as  well  as  of  fear), 
I  blamed  myself  for  bringing  on  the  wild  disorder  of  the 
building.  "If  I  had  not  gone  away,  if  I  had  not  enlarged 
my  plan,  the  house  would  now  be  in  order,"  was  the  thought 
which  tortured  me. 

The  sufferer's  speech  had  failed,  and  her  pitiful  attempts 
to  make  her  wishes  known  wrung  my  heart  with  helpless 
pity.  Her  eyes,  wide,  dark  and  beautiful,  pleaded  with  me 
for  help,  and  yet  I  could  only  kneel  by  her  side  and  press 
her  hand  and  repeat  the  doctor's  words  of  comfort.  "It  will 
pass  away,  mother,  just  as  your  other  attacks  have  done. 
I  am  sure  of  it.  Don't  try  to  talk.  Don't  worry." 

As  the  night  deepened,  dark  and  sultry,  distant  flashes 
of  silent  lightning  added  to  the  lurid  character  of  my  mid 
night  vigil.  It  seemed  that  all  my  plans  and  all  my  hopes 
had  gone  awry.  Helpless,  longing  for  light,  I  wore  out 
the  lagging  hours  beside  my  mother's  bed,  with  very  little 
change  in  her  condition  to  relieve  the  strain  of  my  anxiety. 
"Will  she  ever  speak  again?  Have  I  heard  her  voice  for 
the  last  time?"  These  questions  came  again  and  again  to 
my  mind. 

Dawn  crept  into  the  room  at  last,  and  Franklin  came 
on  the  early  train.  With  his  coming,  mother  regained  some 
part  of  her  lost  courage.  She  grew  rapidly  stronger  before 
night  came  again,  and  was  able  to  falter  a  few  words'  in 
greeting  and  to  ask  for  father. 

During  the  following  day  she  steadily  improved,  and  in 
the  afternoon  was  able  to  sit  up  in  her  bed.  One  of  the 
first  of  her  interests  was  a  desire  to  show  my  brother  a  new 

112 


The     Choice     of     the     New     Daughter 

bonnet  which  I  had  recently  purchased  for  her  in  the 
city,  and  at  her  request  I  put  it  into  her  hands. 

Her  love  and  gratitude  moved  us  both  to  tears.  Her 
action  had  the  intolerable  pathos  of  a  child's  weakness 
united  with  a  kind  of  delirium.  To  watch  her  feeble  hands 
exhibiting  a  head-dress  which  I  feared  she  would  never  again 
wear — displaying  it  with  a  pitiful  smile  of  pride  and  joy — 
was  almost  more  than  I  could  bear.  Her  face  shone  with 
happiness  as  she  strove  to  tell  my  brother  of  the  building 
I  was  doing  to  make  her  more  comfortable.  "Zuleema  is 
coming,"  she  said.  "My  new  daughter — is  coming." 

When  Franklin  and  I  were  alone  for  a  moment,  I  said: 
"She  must  not  die.  /  won't  let  her  die.  She  must  live  a 
little  longer  to  enjoy  the  new  rooms  I  am  building  for  her." 

It  would  appear  that  the  intensity  of  my  desire,  the 
power  of  my  resolve  to  bring  her  back  to  life,  strengthened 
her,  wrought  upon  her  with  inexplicable  magic,  for  by  the 
time  my  father  arrived  she  was  able  to  speak  and  to  sit 
once  more  in  her  wheeled  chair.  She  even  joked  with  me 
about  "Zuleema." 

"You'd  better  hurry,"  she  said,  and  then  the  shadow 
came  back  upon  me  with  bitter  chill.  How  insecure  her 
hold  on  life  had  become! 

Haste  on  the  building  was  now  imperative — so  much,  at 
least,  I  could  control.  With  one  crew  of  carpenters, 
another  of  painters,  and  a  third  of  tinners,  all  working  at 
the  same  time,  I  rushed  the  construction  forward.  At 
times  my  action  presented  itself  to  me  as  a  race  against 
death,  or  at  least  with  death's  messenger.  What  I  feared, 
most  of  all,  was  a  sudden  decline  to  helpless  invalidism  on 
my  mother's  part,  a  condition  in  which  a  trained  nurse 
would  be  absolutely  necessary.  To  get  the  rooms  in  order 
while  yet  our  invalid  was  able  to  move  about  the  house, 
was  now  my  all-absorbing  interest. 

With  no  time  to  dream  of  love,  with  no   thought  of 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

writing,  I  toiled  like  a  slave,  wet  with  perspiration,  dusty 
and  unkempt.  With  my  shirt  open  at  the  throat  and  my 
sleeves  rolled  to  the  elbow,  I  passed  from  one  phase  of 
the  job  to  another,  lending  a  hand  here  and  a  shoulder 
there.  In  order  that  I  might  hasten  the  tearing  down  and 
clearing  away,  I  plunged  into  the  hardest  and  dirtiest  tasks, 
but  at  night,  after  the  men  were  gone,  dark  moods  of  deep 
depression  came  over  me,  moments  in  which  the  essential 
futility  of  my  powers  overwhelmed  me  with  something  like 
despair. 

"What  right  have  you  to  ask  that  bright  and  happy  girl — 
any  girl — to  share  the  uncertainties,  the  parsimony,  the 
ineludible  struggle  of  your  disappointing  life?"  I  demanded 
of  myself,  and  to  this  there  was  but  one  answer:  "I  have 
no  right.  I  have  only  a  need." 

Nevertheless,  I  wrote  her  each  day  a  short  account  of  my 
doings,  and  her  friendly  replies  were  a  source  of  encourage 
ment,  of  comfort.  She  did  not  know  (I  was  careful  to 
conceal  them)  the  torturing  anxieties  through  which  I  was 
passing,  and  her  pages  were,  for  the  most  part,  a  pleasant 
reflection  of  the  uneventful,  care-free  routine  of  the  camp. 
In  spite  of  her  caution  she  conveyed  to  me,  beneath  her 
elliptical  phrases,  the  fact  that  she  missed  me  and  that 
my  return  would  not  be  displeasing  to  her.  "When  shall 
we  see  you?"  she  asked. 

In  one  of  her  letters  she  mentioned — casually — that  on 
Monday  she  was  going  to  Chicago  with  her  sister,  but  would 
return  to  the  camp  at  the  end  of  the  week. 

Something  in  this  letter  led  me  to  a  sudden  change  of 
plan.  As  mother  was  now  quite  comfortable  again  I  said 
to  her,  "Zuleema  has  gone  to  Chicago  to  do  some  shopping. 
I  think  I'll  run  down  and  meet  her  and  ask  her  to  help  me 
select  the  curtains  and  wall-paper  for  your  new  room.  What 
do  you  say  to  that?" 

114 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

"Go  along!"  she  said  instantly,  "but  I  expect  you  to  bring 
her  home  with  you." 

"Oh,  I  can't  do  that,"  I  protested.  "I  haven't  any  right 
to  do  that— yet!" 

The  mere  idea  of  involving  the  girl  in  my  household 
problem  seemed  exciting  enough,  and  on  my  way  down  to 
the  city  I  became  a  bit  less  confident.  I  decided  to  approach 
the  matter  of  my  shopping  diplomatically.  She  might  be 
alarmed  at  my  precipitancy. 

She  was  not  alarmed — on  the  contrary  her  pleased  sur 
prise  and  her  keen  interest  in  my  mother's  new  chamber 
gave  me  confidence.     "I  want  you  to  help  me  buy  the 
furnishings  for  the  new  rooms,"  I  said  almost  at  once. 
"I  shall  be  glad  to  help,"she  replied  in  the  most  natural  way. 

Evidently,  she  saw  nothing  especially  significant  in  my 
request,  but  to  me  it  was  a  subtle  stratagem.  To  have  her 
take  part  in  my  bargain-hunting  was  almost  as  exciting  as 
though  we  were  furnishing  OUR  home,  but  I  dared  not 
assume  that  she  was  thinking  along  these  dangerous  lines. 
That  she  was  genuinely  interested  in  my  household  problems 
was  evident,  but  I  was  not  justified  in  asking  anything 
further.  She  was  distinctly  closer  to  me  that  day,  more 
tenderly  intimate  than  she  had  ever  been  before,  and  her 
womanly  understanding  of  my  task — the  deep  sympathy 
she  expressed  when  I  told  her  of  my  mother's  recent  illness — 
all  combined  to  give  me  comfort — and  hope! 

A  few  days  later  we  rode  back  to  Eagle's  Nest  Camp 
together,  and  all  through  those  three  hours  on  the  train 
a  silent,  subconscious,  wordless  adjustment  went  on  between 
us.  That  she  was  secretly  debating  the  question  of  accept 
ing  me  was  certain,  and  there  was  nothing  in  her  manner 
to  dishearten  me;  on  the  contrary,  she  seemed  to  enjoy 
playing  round  the  perilous  suggestion. 

We  dined  at  "the  Castle"  as  usual,  and  late  that  night, 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle    Border 

as  we  walked  slowly  over  to  the  camp  through  the  odorous 
woods,  hearing  the  whippoorwilFs  cry  and  the  owlets  hoot 
from  their  dark  coverts,  I  was  made  aware  that  my  day's 
work  had  drawn  her  closer  into  my  life.  I  had  made  her 
aware  of  my  need. 

The  day  which  followed  our  return  to  camp  was  my 
thirty-ninth  birthday,  and  I  celebrated  it  by  taking  a  long 
walk  and  talk  with  her.  She  took  some  sewing  with  her, 
and  as  we  rested  under  a  great  oak  tree,  we  spoke  of  many 
intimate,  personal  things,  always  with  the  weight  of  our 
unsolved  problem  on  our  mind. 

At  last,  in  approaching  my  plea  for  help,  I  stated  the 
worst  of  my  case.  "I  am  poor  and  shall  always  remain 
poor,"  I  said.  "My  talent  is  small  and  my  work  has  only 
a  very  limited  appeal.  I  see  no  great  improvement  in  my 
fortunes.  I  have  done  an  enormous  amount  of  work  this 
year  (I've  written  three  volumes),  but  all  of  them  conjoined 
will  not  bring  in  as  much  cash  as  a  good  stone-mason  can 
earn.  But  that  isn't  the  worst  of  it!  The  hopeless  part 
of  it  is — I  like  my  job.  I  wouldn't  change  to  a  more  profit 
able  one  if  I  could.  I  have  only  one  other  way  of  earning 
money,  and  that  is  by  physical  labor.  If  the  worst  comes 
to  the  worst,  I  can  farm  or  do  carpenter  work." 

Her  reply  to  all  this  was  not  entirely  disheartening.  "To 
make  money  is  not  the  most  important  thing  in  the  world," 
she  said,  and  then  told  me  of  her  own  childhood  in  Illinois, 
of  the  rigid  economies  which  had  always  been  necessary 
in  the  Taft  home.  "My  father's  salary  as  a  professor  of 
geology  was  small,  and  with  six  people  to  feed  and  clothe, 
and  four  children  to  be  educated,  my  poor  little  mother 
had  a  very  busy  and  anxious  time  of  it.  I  know  by  personal 
experience  what  it  is  to  lack  money  for  food  and  clothes. 
The  length  of  my  stay  in  Paris  was  dependent  on  rigid  daily 
economy.  I  hadn't  an  extra  franc  to  spare." 

116 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

This  confession  of  her  own  lifelong  poverty  should  have 
turned  me  aside  from  my  fell  purpose,  but  it  did  not — it 
merely  encouraged  me  to  go  on.  In  place  of  saying,  "My 
dear  girl,  as  compensation  for  all  those  years  of  care  and 
humiliating  poverty  you  deserve  a  spacious  home,  with 
servants  and  a  carriage.  Realizing  that  I  can  offer  you 
only  continued  poverty  and  added  anxiety,  I  here  and  now 
relinquish  my  design.  I  withdraw  in  favor  of  a  better  and 
richer  man" — instead  of  uttering  these  noble  words,  what 
did  I  do?  I  did  the  exact  opposite!  I  proceeded  to  press 
my  selfish,  remorseless,  unwarranted  demand! 

It  is  customary  for  elderly  men  to  refer  either  flippantly 
or  with  gentle  humor  to  their  days  of  courtship,  forgetting 
(or  ignoring)  the  tremulous  eagerness,  the  grave  questioning 
and  the  tender  solemnity  of  purpose  with  which  they  weighed 
the  joys  and  responsibilities  of  married  life.  It  is  easy  to 
be  cynical  or  evasive  or  unduly  sentimental  in  writing  of 
our  youthful  love  affairs,  when  the  frosts  of  sixty  years  have 
whitened  our  heads,  after  years  of  toil  and  care  have 
dimmed  our  eyes  and  thinned  our  blood,  but  I  shall  permit 
neither  of  these  unworthy  moods  to  color  my  report  of  this 
day's  emotion.  I  shall  not  deny  the  alternating  moments 
of  hope  and  doubt,  of  bitterness  and  content,  which  made 
that  afternoon  both  sweet  and  sad. 

The  thing  I  was  about  to  do  was  tragically  destructive — 
I  knew  that.  To  put  out  a  hand,  to  arrest  this  happy  and 
tranquil  girl,  saying,  "Come,  be  my  wife.  Come,  suffer  with 
me,  starve  with  me,"  was  a  deed  whose  consequences  scared 
me  while  they  allured  me.  I  felt  the  essential  injustice  of 
such  a  marriage,  and  I  foresaw  some  of  its  accompanying 
perplexities,  but  I  did  not  turn  aside  as  I  should  have  done. 
With  no  dependable  source  of  income,  with  an  invalid 
mother  to  care  for,  I  asked  this  artist,  so  urban,  so  native 
to  the  studio,  so  closely  knit  to  her  joyous  companions  in 

117 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

the  city,  to  go  with  me  into  exile,  into  a  country  town,  to 
be  the  housekeeper  of  a  commonplace  cottage  filled  with 
aged  people!  "It  is  monstrous  selfishness;  it  is  wrong," 
I  said,  "but  I  want  you." 

My  philosophy,  even  at  that  time,  was  essentially  indi 
vidualistic.  I  believed  in  the  largest  opportunity  to  every 
human  soul.  Equal  rights  meant  Equal  rights  in  my  creed. 
I  had  no  intention  of  asking  Zulime  Taft  to  sink  her  indi 
viduality  in  mine.  I  wanted  her  to  remain  herself. 
Marriage,  as  I  contemplated  it,  was  to  be  not  a  condition 
where  the  woman  was  a  subordinate  but  an  equal  partner, 
and  yet  how  unequal  the  sacrifice!  "I  ask  you  to  join 
your  future  with  mine.  It's  a  frightful  risk,  but  I  am 
selfish  enough  to  wish  it." 

Under  no  illusion  about  my  own  character,  I  admitted 
that  there  is  no  special  charm  in  a  just  man.  To  have  a 
sense  of  honor  is  fine,  but  to  have  a  joyous  and  lovely 
disposition  makes  a  man  a  great  deal  easier  to  live  with. 
I  was  perfectly  well  aware  that  as  a  husband  I  would  prove 
neither  lovely  nor  joyous.  My  temper  was  not  habitually 
cheerful.  Like  most  writers,  I  was  self-absorbed,  filled  with 
a  sense  of  the  importance  of  my  literary  designs.  To  be 
"just"  was  easy,  but  to  be  charming  and  considerate — these 
were  the  points  on  which  I  was  sure  to  fail,  and  I  knew  it. 
Did  that  deter  me?  Not  at  all!  Bitterly  unwilling  to 
surrender  Zulime  to  the  richer  and  kindlier  man  who  was, 
undoubtedly,  waiting  at  that  moment  to  receive  her  and 
cherish  her,  I  pleaded  with  her  to  share  my  poverty  and 
my  hope  of  future  fame. 

Shaken  by  my  appeal,  she  asked  for  time  in  which  to 
consider  this  problem.  "I  ought  to  talk  with  Lorado," 
she  said. 

The  mere  fact  that  she  could  not  decide  against  me  at 
the  moment  gave  me  confidence.  "Very  well,"  I  said. 

118 


The     Choice    of     the     New     Daughter 

"Mother  wants  me — I  shall  go  home  for  a  week.  Let  me 
know  when  I  can  come  again.  I  hope  it  will  not  be  more 
than  a  week." 

In  this  arrangement  we  rested,  and  as  we  walked  back 
to  camp  I  cared  nothing  for  the  sly  words  or  glances  of  our 
fellow  artists.  I  believed  I  had  won  my  case. 

My  mother's  demand  for  my  presence  did  not  arise — I 
soon  learned — from  any  return  of  her  malady,  but  from  a 
desire  for  news  of  my  courtship.  "Where's  my  new  daugh 
ter?  Why  didn't  you  bring  her?"  she  demanded. 

"She  couldn't  come  this  time.  The  question  is  still  un 
settled." 

"Go  right  back  and  settle  it,"  she  urged.  "Go  quick, 
before  some  one  else  gets  her.  Write  to  her.  Tell  her 
to  come  right  up.  Send  her  a  telegram.  Seems  as  though 
I  can't  wait  another  week." 

Her  urgency  made  me  laugh,  even  while  I  perceived  the 
pathos  of  it.  "I  can't  bring  her  to  you,  mother,  till  she 
is  willing  to  come  as  a  bride — but  she's  thinking  about  it, 
and  I  am  going  back  next  week  to  get  my  answer.  Be 
patient  a  little  while  longer.  I  promise  you  the  whole 
question  will  be  settled  soon,  and  I  hope  it  will  be  settled 
our  way.  Zulime  seems  to  like  me." 

Dear  old  mother!  Her  stammering,  tremulous  utterance 
made  me  smile  and  it  made  me  weep.  She  was  growing 
old  prematurely,  and  the  need  of  haste  was  urgent.  "If  I 
can  possibly  persuade  her  to  come,"  I  added  very  gravely, 
"I'll  fetch  her  home  to  eat  Thanksgiving  dinner  with  you." 

My  tone,  rather  than  my  words,  silenced  her,  and  gave 
her  a  measure  of  content,  although  she  was  childishly  im 
patient  of  even  a  day's  delay. 

All  that  week  I  alternately  hoped  and  doubted,  assembling 
all  the  items  on  the  credit  side  of  my  ledger,  and  at  last 
a  letter  came  in  which  Zulime  indicated  that  she  wished  to 

119 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

see  me.  "I  am  still  undecided,"  she  said,  "but  you  may 
come."  I  left  at  once  for  the  camp,  feeling  that  her  con 
fession  of  indecision  was  in  my  favor. 

Lorado  was  not  markedly  favorable  to  me  as  a  brother- 
in-law.  He  liked  me  and  respected  me  as  a  friend,  but  as 
a  suitor  for  the  hand  of  his  sister — well,  that  was  another 
and  far  more  serious  matter. 

The  camp  "Equipage"  met  me  at  the  station,  and  I  con 
sented  to  ride  in  it  as  far  as  the  Heckman  gate,  hoping 
that  Zulime  would  be  there  to  welcome  me.  In  this  I  was 
not  disappointed,  and  something  in  her  face  and  the  firm 
clasp  of  her  hand  reassured  me. 

For  nearly  a  week,  in  the  midst  of  the  most  glorious 
October  landscape,  surrounded  by  the  scarlet  and  gold  and 
crimson  branches  of  the  maples  and  the  deep-reds  and 
bronze-greens  of  the  oaks,  she  and  I  walked  and  rode  and 
boated  in  almost  constant  companionship.  Idyllic  days! 
Days  of  a  quality  I  had  lost  all  hope  of  ever  again  reliving. 
Days  of  quiet  happiness  and  almost  perfect  content,  for 
on  an  afternoon  of  dreamlike  beauty,  in  a  glade  radiant 
with  hazy  golden  sunshine  and  odorous  with  the  ripening 
leaves,  she  spoke  the  all-important  words  which  joined 
her  future  life  with  mine. 

We  were  seated  at  the  moment  on  our  favorite  bank, 
under  a  tall  oak  tree,  gorgeous  as  a  sunset  cloud,  and  as 
silent.  I  had  been  reading  to  her,  and  she  was  busy  with 
some  delicate  embroidery.  The  crickets  were  chirping 
sleepily  in  the  grass  at  our  feet,  and  the  jays  calling  harshly 
seemed  warning  us  of  the  passing  of  summer  and  the  coming 
on  of  frost. 

"Let  the  wedding  day  be  soon,"  I  pleaded  as  we  rose 
to  return  to  camp.  "I  am  nearing  the  dead-line.  I  am 
almost  forty  years  old— I  can't  afford  to  wait.  I  want  you 
to  come  to  me  now — at  once.  The  old  folks  are  waiting 

120 


The     Choice     of     the     New     Daughter 

for  you.  They  want  you  for  Thanksgiving  Day.  Your 
presence  would  make  them  happier  than  any  other  good 
fortune  in  this  world." 

She  understood  my  way  of  putting  the  argument.  She 
knew  that  I  was  veiling  my  own  eagerness  under  my 
mother's  need,  and  after  a  little  reflection  she  said,  "I  am 
going  out  to  my  father's  home  in  Kansas.  You  may  come 
for  me  there  on  the  twenty-third  of  November.  That  is — 
if  you  still  want  me  at  that  time." 

The  end  of  the  camp  season  was  at  hand;  everybody 
was  packing  up,  and  so  my  girl  and  I  turned  with  deep 
regret  from  the  golden  halls  of  our  sylvan  meeting-place. 
"This  is  my  Indian  summer,"  I  said  to  her,  "and  that  you 
may  never  have  cause  to  regret  the  decision  which  this 
day  has  brought  to  you,  is  my  earnest  hope." 

More  than  twenty  years  have  gone  over  our  heads,  and 
as  I  write  these  lines  our  silver  wedding  is  not  far  off. 
Our  lives  have  not  been  all  sunshine,  but  Zulime  has  met 
all  storms  with  a  brave  sweetness,  which  I  cannot  over 
praise.  If  she  has  regrets,  she  does  not  permit  me  to  know 
them.  My  poverty — which  persists — has  not  embittered 
her  or  caused  her,  so  far  as  I  know,  a  single  mood  of  self- 
commiseration. 


121 


CHAPTER  NINE 

A    Judicial    Wedding 

ON  reaching  my  Elm  Street  home  the  next  day,  I  was 
surprised  and  deeply  gratified  to  find  on  my  desk  a 
letter  from  William  Dean  Howells,  in  which  he  said:  "I  am 
at  the  Palmer  House.  I  hope  you  will  come  to  see  me  soon, 
for  I  start  for  Kansas  on  a  lecture  trip  in  a  few  days." 

Although  I  had  long  been  urging  that  he  should  come 
to  Chicago,  he  had  steadfastly  declined  to  accept  a  lecture 
engagement  west  of  Ohio,  and  I  could  not  quite  understand 
what  had  led  him  so  far  afield  as  Kansas.  I  hastened  to 
call  upon  him,  and,  at  the  first  appropriate  pause  in  the 
conversation,  I  spoke  to  him  of  my  engagement.  "Miss 
Taft  loves  your  books  and  would  keenly  appreciate  the 
honor  of  meeting  you." 

With  instant  perception  of  my  wish  to  have  him  know 
my  future  wife,  he  replied,  "My  dear  fellow,  I  am  eager 
to  meet  her.  Perhaps  my  gray  hairs  will  excuse  your 
bringing  her  to  call  upon  me." 

"At  your  convenience,"  I  replied  eagerly.  "I  want  you 
to  know  her.  She  is  very  much  worth  while." 

"I  am  sure  of  that,"  he  smilingly  retorted. 

He  was  billed  to  speak  that  night,  and  as  he  was  leaving 
for  Rock  Island  the  following  day  he  arranged  that  I  should 
bring  Zulime  to  the  hotel  just  before  he  started  for  his 
lecture. 

After  telling  her  of  his  wish  to  see  her,  I  explained  the 
significance  of  it.  "You  must  understand  that  Mr.  Howells 

122 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

is  a  kind  of  literary  father  confessor  to  me.  He  is  a  man 
of  most  delicate  courtesy.  Once  you  have  seen  him,  once 
you  have  looked  into  his  face,  you  will  love  him." 

She  was  as  ready  as  I  was  to  take  her,  and  promptly  on 
the  minute  we  sent  up  our  names  and  took  seats  in  the 
Ladies'  Parlor.  It  had  been  years  since  I  had  entered  the 
Palmer  House,  and  as  we  waited  we  compared  memories 
of  its  old-time  splendor.  "My  father  still  regards  it  as  the 
grandest  hotel  in  the  West,  and  it  is  probable  that  Mr. 
Howells  knew  of  no  other.  So  far  as  I  know  he  has  never 
been  in  Chicago  before,  unless  possibly  for  a  few  days 
during  the  World's  Fair." 

Zulime  was  much  excited  at  the  thought  of  meeting  the 
great  novelist,  but  when  he  came,  she  took  his  hand  with 
graceful  composure,  expressing  just  the  right  mingling  of  re 
serve  and  pleasure.  I  was  proud  of  her,  and  the  fact  that 
Howells  instantly  and  plainly  approved  of  her,  added  to 
my  satisfaction. 

"I  congratulate  you  both,"  he  said  as  we  were  leaving. 
"You  see,"  he  added,  addressing  himself  to  Zulime,  "your 
husband-elect  is  one  of  my  boys.  I  am  particularly  con 
cerned  with  his  good  fortune.  I  like  his  bringing  you  to  see 
me,  and  I  hope  we  shall  see  you  both  in  New  York." 

In  a  literary  sense  this  was  my  paternal  blessing,  for  "Mr. 
Howells"  had  been  a  kind  of  spiritual  progenitor  and  guide 
ever  since  my  first  meeting  with  him  in  '87.  His  wisdom, 
his  humor,  his  exquisite  art,  had  been  of  incalculable  assist 
ance  to  me,  as  they  had  been  to  Clemens,  Burroughs,  and 
many  others  of  my  fellow-craftsmen,  and  his  commendation 
of  me  to  my  intended  wife  almost  convinced  me,  for  the 
moment,  of  my  worthiness.  How  delightful  he  was!  How 
delicate — how  understanding!  We  both  went  away,  rich 
in  the  honor  of  his  approval  of  our  prospective  union. 

Rich  in  his  friendship,  I  was  but  poorly  furnished  in  other 

123 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

respects.  I  recall  with  shame  the  shopping  tour  which  I 
made  along  State  Street,  searching  for  an  engagement  ring, 
a  gauge  which  Zulime,  knowing  my  poverty,  stoutly  insisted 
that  she  did  not  need — a  statement  which  I  was  simple 
enough  to  believe  until  her  sister  enlightened  me.  "That's 
only  Zuhl's  way.  Of  course  she  wants  a  ring — every  girl 
does.  Don't  fail  to  get  her  one — a  nice  one!" 

I  found  one  at  last  that  Zulime  thought  I  could  afford. 
It  was  a  small  gold  band  with  five  opals,  surrounded  by 
several  very  minute  diamonds,  all  of  which  could  be  had 
for  the  sum  of  thirty-eight  dollars.  As  I  bought  this  ring 
Zulime's  girlish  delight  in  it  touched  as  well  as  instructed 
me.  Each  time  she  held  her  finger  up  for  me  to  see  (she 
had  a  beautiful  hand)  I  regretted  that  I  had  not  purchased 
a  better  ring.  Why  did  I  take  a  ring  at  thirty-eight  dollars ! 
Why  not  fifty  dollars?  But  what  could  be  expected  of  a 
man  who  never  before  had  spent  so  much  as  one  dollar  on 
a  piece  of  jewelry,  a  man  whose  chief  way  of  earning  money 
was  to  save  it?  Whenever  I  look  at  that  poor  little  jewel 
now  I  experience  a  curious  mingling  of  shame  and  regret. 
I  had  so  little  money  at  that  time,  and  the  future  was  so 
uncertain ! 

Zulime  was  living  with  her  sister,  and  there  I  spent  most 
of  my  evenings  and  some  of  my  afternoons  during  the 
following  week,  scarcely  able  to  realize  my  change  of  fortune 
except  when  alone  with  her,  discussing  our  future.  She 
agreed  at  last  to  a  date  for  the  wedding  which  would  enable 
us  to  spend  Thanksgiving  at  West  Salem,  and  then  for 
some  reason,  not  clear  to  me  now,  I  suddenly  took  the  train 
for  Gallup,  New  Mexico,  with  the  Navajo  Indian  Agency 
for  final  destination. 

Just  why  I  should  have  chosen  to  visit  Ganado  at  this 
precise  time  is  inexplicable,  but  there  is  no  mystery  in  my 
leaving  Chicago.  My  future  sister-in-law  bluntly  informed 

124 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

me  that  my  absence  from  the  city  would  greatly  facilitate 
the  necessary  dressmaking.  Although  an  obtuse  person  in 
some  ways,  I  know  when  I  am  bumped.  Three  days  after 
Fuller's  luncheon  to  liowells,  I  reached  the  town  of  Gallup, 
which  is  the  point  of  departure  for  the  Navajo  Agency, 
some  twenty-five  or  thirty  miles  north  of  the  Santa  Fe 
railway. 

For  nearly  ten  years  I  had  been  going  to  the  Rocky 
Mountains  at  least  once  during  the  summer  season,  and  it 
is  probable  that  I  felt  the  need  of  something  to  offset  the 
impressions  of  my  tour  in  England  and  France — to  lose 
touch  with  my  material  even  for  twelve  months  was  to 
be  cheated — then,  too,  I  hoped  in  this  way  to  shorten  the 
weeks  of  waiting.  Anyhow,  here  I  was  in  Gallup,  a  drab 
little  town  which  would  have  been  a  horror  to  my  bride- 
elect. 

One  of  the  reasons  for  my  being  in  New  Mexico  I  am 
sure  about.  With  the  prospect  of  having  some  sort  of 
an  apartment  in  the  city  and  a  cabin  at  the  camp,  I  was 
in  the  market  for  Navajo  rugs,  and  silver,  and  Hopi  pottery. 
It  was  in  pursuit  of  these  (and  of  literary  material)  that 
I  mounted  the  stage  the  next  morning  and  set  off  up  the 
sun-lit  valley  to  the  north. 

In  leaving  Gallup  behind,  my  spirits  rose.  I  wished  that 
Zulime  might  have  shared  this  strange  landscape  with  me. 
On  the  right  a  distant,  dimly-blue  wall  of  mountains  ran, 
while  to  the  west  rolled  high,  treeless  hills,  against  which 
an  occasional  native  hut  showed  like  a  wolf's  den,  half-hid 
among  dwarf  pinon  trees  and  surrounded  by  naked  children 
and  savage  dogs. 

At  intervals  we  came  upon  solitary  shepherds  tending 
their  piebald  flocks,  as  David  and  Abner  guarded  their 
father's  sheep  in  Judea.  That  these  patient  shepherds, 
watching  their  lean  herds,  these  Deborahs  weaving  their 

125 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

bright  blankets  beneath  gnarled  branches  of  sparse  cedar 
trees,  should  be  living  less  than  forty-eight  hours  from 
Chicago,  was  incredible,  and  yet  here  they  were!  Their 
life  and  landscape,  though  of  a  texture  with  that  of  Arabia, 
were  as  real  as  Illinois,  and  every  mile  carried  me  deeper 
into  the  silence  and  serenity  of  their  tribal  home. 

Brown  boys,  belted  with  silver  and  wearing  shirts  of  gay 
calico,  met  us,  riding  their  wiry  little  ponies  with  easy 
grace.  Children,  naked,  shy  as  foxes,  arrested  their  play 
beside  dry  clumps  of  sage-brush  and  stared  in  solemn  row, 
whilst  their  wrinkled,  leathery  grand-sires  hobbled  out, 
cupping  their  thin  brown  hands  in  prayer  for  tobacco. 

There  was  something  Oriental,  fictive  in  it  all,  and  when 
at  the  end  of  the  day  I  found  myself  a  guest  in  a  pleasant 
cottage  at  the  Agency,  I  was  fully  awake  to  the  contrasts 
of  my  "material."  My  ears,  as  well  as  my  eyes,  were  open 
to  the  drama  of  this  land  whose  prehistoric  customs  were 
about  to  pass.  For  the  moment  I  was  inclined  to  rest  there 
and  study  my  surroundings,  but  as  the  real  objective  of 
my  journey  was  Ganado,  about  thirty  miles  to  the  west 
of  the  Fort,  I  decided  to  go  on. 

Ganado  was  the  home  of  a  famous  Indian  trader  named 
Hubbell,  whose  store  was  known  to  me  as  a  center  of 
Navajo  life.  Toward  this  point  I  set  forth  a  few  days  later, 
attended  by  a  young  Navajo  whose  hogan  was  in  that 
direction,  and  who  had  promised  to  put  me  on  my  trail. 

He  was  a  fine,  athletic  youth  of  pleasant  countenance, 
mounted  upon  a  spotted  pony  and  wearing  a  shirt  of  purple 
calico.  With  a  belt  of  silver  disks  around  his  waist  and 
a  fillet  of  green  cloth  binding  his  glossy  black  hair,  he  was 
distinctly  and  delightfully  colorful. 

Our  way  rose  at  once  to  the  level  of  a  majestic  plateau, 
sparsely  set  with  pines  and  cedars,  a  barren  land  from  which 
the  grass  and  shrubs  had  long  since  been  cropped  by  swarms 

126 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

of  sheep  and  goats.  Nevertheless,  it  was  lovely  to  the 
eye,  and  as  we  rode  forward  we  came  upon  a  party  of 
Navajo  girls  gathering  pifion  nuts,  laughing  and  singing 
in  happy  abandon,  untroubled  by  the  white  man's  world. 
They  greeted  my  guide  with  jests,  but  became  very 
grave  as  he  pointed  out  a  fresh  bear-track  in  the  dust 
of  the  trail. 

"Heap  bears,"  he  said  to  me.  "Injun  no  kill  bears. 
Bears  big  medicine,"  and  as  we  rode  away  he  laughed  back 
at  the  panic-stricken  girls,  who  were  hurriedly  collecting 
their  nuts  in  order  to  flee  the  spot. 

At  last  my  guide  halted.  "I  go  here,"  he  signed  with 
graceful  hand.  "You  keep  trail;  bimeby  you  come  deep 
valley — stream.  On  left  white  man's  house.  You  stop 
there."  All  of  which  was  as  plain  as  if  in  spoken  words. 

As  I  rode  on  alone,  the  peace,  the  poetry,  the  suggestive 
charm  of  that  silent,  lonely,  radiant  land  took  hold  upon 
me  with  compelling  power.  Here  in  the  midst  of  busy, 
commonplace  America  it  lay,  a  section  of  the  Polished 
Stone  Age,  retaining  the  most  distinctive  customs,  songs  and 
dances  of  the  past.  Here  was  a  people  going  about  its 
immemorial  pursuits,  undisturbed  by  the  railway  and  the 
telephone.  Its  shepherds,  like  the  Hittites,  who  wandered 
down  from  the  hills  upon  the  city  of  Babylon  two  thousand 
years  before  the  Christian  Era,  were  patriarchal  and  pas 
toral.  They  asked  but  a  tent,  a  piece  of  goat's  flesh,  and 
a  cool  spring. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  (I  loitered  luxuriously)  I  came  to 
the  summit  of  a  long  ridge  which  overlooked  a  broad,  curv 
ing  valley,  at  the  far-away  western  rim  of  which  a  slender 
line  of  water  gleamed.  How  beautiful  it  all  was,  but  how 
empty!  No  furrow,  no  hut,  no  hint  of  human  habitation 
appeared,  a  land  which  must  ever  be  lonely,  for  it  is  with 
out  rains,  and  barren  of  streams  for  irrigation. 

127 


A    Daughter    of    the   Middle    Border 

An  hour  later  I  rode  up  to  the  door  of  a  long,  low,  mud- 
walled  building,  and  was  met  by  the  trader,  a  bush-bearded, 
middle-aged  man  with  piercing  gray  eyes  and  sturdy,  up 
right  figure.  This  was  Lorenzo  Hubbell,  one  of  the  best- 
known  citizens  of  New  Mexico,  living  here  alone,  a  day's 
ride  from  a  white  settler. 

Though  hairy  and  spectacled  he  was  a  comparatively 
young  man,  but  his  mixed  blood  had  already  given  him  a 
singular  power  over  his  dark-skinned  neighbors  of  the 
territory. 

His  wife  and  children  were  spending  the  summer  in 
Alberquerque,  and  in  the  intimacy  of  our  long  days  to 
gether  I  spoke  of  my  approaching  marriage.  "I  want  to 
buy  some  native  blankets  and  some  Navajo  silver  for  our 
new  home." 

His  interest  was  quick.  "Let  me  send  your  wife  a 
wedding  present.  How  would  she  like  some  Hopi  jars?" 

The  off-hand  way  in  which  he  used  the  words,  "your  wife," 
startled  me — reminded  me  that  in  less  than  two  weeks  I 
was  due  at  Professor  Taft's  home  to  claim  my  bride.  I 
accepted  his  offer  of  the  vases  and  began  to  collect  silver 
and  turquoise  ornaments,  in  order  that  I  might  carry  back 
to  Zulime  some  part  of  the  poetry  of  this  land  and  its  people. 

"The  more  I  think  about  it,"  I  wrote  to  her,  "the  more 
I  want  you  to  share  my  knowledge  of  'the  High  Country/ 
Why  not  put  our  wedding  a  week  earlier  and  let  me  take 
you  into  the  mountains?  If  you  will  advance  the  date  to 
the  eighteenth  of  November,  we  can  have  an  eight-day  trip 
in  Colorado  and  still  reach  mother  and  the  Homestead  in 
time  for  Thanksgiving.  I  want  to  show  you  my  best 
beloved  valleys  and  peaks." 

Though  addressing  the  letter  to  her  Chicago  home,  I  knew 
that  she  was  about  to  leave  for  Kansas;  therefore  I  added 
a  postscript:  "I  am  planning  to  meet  you  in  your  father's 

128 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

house  about  the  eighteenth  of  the  month,  and  I  hope  you 
will  approve  my  scheme." 

In  the  glow  of  my  plan  for  a  splendid  Colorado  wedding 
journey,  I  lost  interest  in  Ganado  and  its  Indians.  Making 
arrangements  for  the  shipment  of  my  treasures,  I  saddled 
my  horse  one  morning,  waved  Hubbell  a  joyous  farewell, 
and  started  back  toward  the  Agency  in  the  hope  of  finding 
there  a  letter  from  my  girl. 

In  this  I  was  not  disappointed.  She  wrote:  "I  shall  leave 
for  Kansas  on  the  Burlington,  Sunday  night.  You  can  write 
me  at  Hanover."  It  was  plain  she  had  not  received  my 
latest  word. 

I  began  to  figure.  "If  I  leave  here  to-morrow  forenoon, 
and  catch  the  express  at  Gallup  to-morrow  night,  I  can 
make  the  close  connection  at  Topeka,  and  arrive  in  St. 
Joseph  just  half  an  hour  before  Zulime's  train  comes  in  on' 
Monday  morning.  I  shall  surprise  her — and  delight  myself 
— by  having  breakfast  with  her!" 

However,  I  could  not  get  away  till  morning,  and  with  an 
evening  to  wear  away  I  accepted  the  Agent's  invitation  to 
witness  a  native  dance  which  had  been  announced  to  him 
by  one  of  the  young  Navajo  policemen.  I  had  never  seen 
a  Navajo  dance,  and  gladly  accepted  the  opportunity  to 
do  so. 

It  was  a  clear,  crisp  November  evening  as  we  started  out, 
the  clerk,  his  sister,  one  of  the  teachers  and  myself  riding 
in  a  two-seated  open  wagon,  drawn  by  a  pair  of  spirited 
horses.  The  native  village  was  some  ten  miles  to  the  north, 
and  all  the  way  up  hill,  so  that  before  we  came  in  sight  of 
it  darkness  had  fallen,  and  in  the  light  of  a  bonfire  the 
dancers  were  assembling. 

Of  the  village,  if  there  was  a  village,  I  could  see  little, 
but  a  tall  old  man  (the  town  crier)  was  chanting  an  invi 
tation  or  command  of  some  sort,  and  dark  forms  were 

129 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

moving  to  and  fro  among  the  shadows  of  the  pifion  trees. 
How  remote  it  all  was  from  the  white  man's  world,  how 
self-sufficing  and  peaceful — how  idyllic! 

The  master  of  ceremonies  met  us  and  gave  us  seats,  and 
for  three  hours  we  sat  in  the  glow  of  the  fire,  watching  the 
youthful,  tireless  dancers  circle  and  leap  in  monotonous  yet 
graceful  evolutions.  Here  was  love  and  courtship,  and 
jealousy  and  faithful  friendship,  just  as  among  the  white 
dancers  of  Neshonoc.  Roguish  black  eyes  gleamed  in  the 
light  of  the  fire,  small  feet  beat  the  earth  in  joyous  rhythm, 
and  the  calm  faces  of  the  old  men  lent  dignity  and  a  kind 
of  religious  significance  to  the  scene.  They  were  dreaming 
of  the  past,  when  no  white  man  had  entered  their  world. 

The  young  people  were  almost  equally  indifferent  to  us, 
and  as  the  night  deepened  we  who  were  white  merged  more 
and  more  indistinguishably  with  the  crowd  of  dusky  on 
lookers.  It  was  easy  to  imagine  ourselves  back  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  looking  upon  this  scene  from  the  wonder 
ing  viewpoint  of  the  Spanish  explorers.  Whence  came  these 
people,  these  dances,  these  ceremonials? 

At  last  the  time  came  for  us  to  set  forth  upon  our  long 
ride  back  to  the  Agency,  and  so,  silently,  we  rose  and  slipped 
away  into  the  darkness,  leaving  the  dancers  to  end  their 
immemorial  festival  without  the  aliens'  presence.  They 
had  no  need  of  us,  no  care  for  us.  At  a  little  distance 
I  turned  and  looked  back.  The  songs,  interrupted  by  shrill, 
wolfish  howlings  and  owl-like  hootings,  rang  through  the 
night  with  singular  savage  charm,  a  chant  out  of  the  past, 
a  chorus  which  was  carrying  forward  into  an  individualistic 
white  man's  world  the  voices  of  the  indeterminate  tribal  past. 

The  sky  was  moonless,  the  air  frosty,  and  after  we  had 
entered  the  narrow  canon,  which  was  several  miles  long  and 
very  steep,  the  clerk,  who  was  not  very  skilled  with  horses, 
turned  the  reins  over  to  me,  and  for  an  hour  or  more  I 

130 


A    Judicial    Wedding 

drove  with  one  foot  on  the  brake,  trusting  mainly  to  the 
horses  to  find  their  way.  It  was  bitter  cold  in  the  canon, 
and  my  cramped  right  leg  became  lame — so  lame  that  I 
could  hardly  get  out  of  the  wagon  after  we  reached  the 
Agency.  Excruciating  pain  developed  in  the  sciatic  nerve, 
and  though  I  passed  a  sleepless  night  I  was  determined  to 
leave  next  morning.  "I  shall  go  if  I  have  to  be  carried  to 
my  horse,"  I  said  grimly  to  the  clerk,  who  begged  me  to 
stay  in  bed. 

Fortunately,  the  trader  was  going  to  the  railway  and 
kindly  offered  to  take  me  with  him;  and  so,  laden  with 
Navajo  silver  (bracelets,  buckles  and  rings),  I  started  out, 
so  lame  that  I  dragged  one  leg  with  a  groan,  hoping  that 
with  the  warmth  of  the  sun  my  pain  would  pass  away. 

Reaching  Gallup  at  noon,  I  spent  the  afternoon  sitting 
in  the  sun,  waiting  for  the  train.  At  six  o'clock  it  came, 
and  soon  I  was  washed  and  shaved  and  eating  dinner  on 
the  dining-car  of  the  Continental  Limited. 

All  that  night  and  all  the  next  day  and  far  into  the  second 
night  I  rode,  my  fear  of  missing  connection  at  Topeka 
uniting  with  my  rheumatism  to  make  the  hours  seem  of 
interminable  length.  It  semed  at  times  a  long,  long  "shot" 
—but  I  made  it!  I  reached  the  station  at  Topeka  just  in 
time  to  catch  the  connecting  train,  and  I  was  on  the  plat 
form  at  St.  Joseph  at  sun-rise  a  full  half-hour  before  the 
Burlington  coaches  from  Chicago  were  due. 

As  I  walked  up  and  down,  I  smiled  with  anticipation  of 
the  surprise  I  had  in  store.  "If  she  keeps  her  schedule  I 
shall  see  her  step  from  the  Pullman  car  without  the  slightest 
suspicion  that  I  am  within  six  hundred  miles  of  her,"  I 
thought,  doing  my  best  to  walk  the  kink  out  of  my  leg, 
which  was  still  painful.  "She  is  coming!  My  wife  is 
coming!"  I  repeated,  incredulous  of  the  fact. 

At  eight  o'clock  the  engine  came  nosing  in,  and  while 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

watching  the  line  of  passengers  descend,  I  lost  hope.  It 
was  too  much  to  expect! 

She  was  there!  I  saw  her  as  she  stepped  down  from 
the  rear  Pullman,  and  just  as  she  was  about  to  take  her 
valise  from  the  porter,  I  touched  her  on  the  shoulder  and 
said,  "I'll  take  charge  of  that." 

She  started  and  turned  with  a  look  of  alarm,  a  look  which 
changed  to  amazement,  to  delight.  "Oh!"  she  gasped. 
"Where  did  you  come  from?" 

"From  the  Navajo  reservation,"  I  replied  calmly. 

"But  how  did  you  get  here?" 

"By  train,  like  yourself." 

"But  when — how  long  ago?" 

"About  thirty  minutes,"  I  laughed.  "I'm  a  wizard  at 
making  close  connections."  Then,  seeing  that  she  must 
know  all  about  it  at  once,  I  added,  "Come  into  the  station 
restaurant,  and  while  we  are  eating  breakfast  I  will  tell 
you  where  I  have  been  and  what  brought  me  back  so  soon." 

While  waiting  for  our  coffee  I  took  from  my  valise  a 
bracelet  of  silver,  a  broad  band  shaped  and  ornamented 
by  some  Navajo  silversmith.  "Hold  out  your  arm,"  I  com 
manded.  She  obeyed,  and  I  clasped  the  barbaric  gyve  about 
her  wrist.  "That  is  a  sign  of  your  slavery,"  I  said  gravely. 

Smilingly,  meditatively,  she  fingered  it,  realizing  dimly 
the  grim  truth  which  ran  beneath  my  jesting.  She  was 
about  to  take  on  a  relationship  which  must  inevitably  bring 
work  and  worry  as  well  as  joy. 

(That  silver  band  has  never  left  her  wrist  for  a  moment. 
For  twenty-two  years  she  has  worn  it,  keeping  it  bright 
with  service  for  me,  for  her  children  and  for  her  friends. 
There  is  something  symbolic  in  the  fact  that  it  has  never 
lost  its  clear  luster  and  that  it  has  never  tarnished  the  arm 
it  adorns.) 

Her  joy  in  this  present,  her  astonishment  at  my  un- 

132 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

expected  appearance  on  the  railway  platform,  amused  and 
delighted  me.  I  could  scarcely  convince  her  that  at  six 
o'clock  on  Saturday  night  I  was  in  a  New  Mexico  town, 
waiting  for  the  eastern  express.  It  was  all  a  piece  of  mirac 
ulous  adventure  on  my  part,  but  her  evident  pleasure  in 
its  successful  working  out  made  me  rich — and  very  humble. 
"What  did  you  do  it  for?"  she  asked;  then,  with  a  look  of 
dismay,  she  added,  "What  am  I  going  to  do  with  you  in 
Hanover?" 

"I  think  I  can  find  something  to  do,"  I  answered,  and 
entered  upon  a  detailed  statement  of  my  plan.  "I  want 
you  to  see  the  mountains.  We'll  set  our  wedding  day  for 
the  eighteenth — that  will  give  us  a  week  in  Colorado,  and 
enable  us  to  eat  Thanksgiving  dinner  with  the  old  folks  at 
the  homestead.  You  say  you  have  never  seen  a  real  moun 
tain — well,  here's  your  chance!  Say  the  word,  and  I'll  take 
you  into  the  heart  of  the  San  Juan  Range.  I'll  show  you 
the  splendors  of  Ouray  and  the  Uncompagre." 

Holding  the  floor,  in  order  that  she  might  not  have  a 
chance  to  protest,  I  spread  an  alluring  panorama  of  peaks 
and  valleys  before  her  eyes,  with  an  eloquence  which  I 
intended  should  overcome  every  objection.  That  she  was 
giving  way  to  my  appeal  was  evident.  Her  negatives,  when 
they  came,  were  rather  feeble.  "I  can't  do  it.  It  would 
be  lovely,  but — oh,  it  is  impossible!" 

"It  is  done — it  is  arranged!"  I  replied.  "I  have  already 
sent  for  the  railway  tickets.  They  will  be  at  your  home 
to-morrow  night.  All  is  settled.  We  are  to  be  married  on 
the  eighteenth,  and " 

"But  our  cards  are  all  in  Chicago  and  printed  for  the 
twenty-third!" 

"What  of  that?  Get  some  more — or,  better  still,  forget 
'em!  We  don't  need  cards." 

"But — my  sewing?" 

133 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

"Never  mind  your  sewing.  Would  you  let  a  gown  come 
between  you  and  a  chance  to  see  the  Needle  Peak. ,'  I  am 
determined  that  you  shall  see  Ouray,  Red  Mountain,  and 
the  San  Juan  Divide." 

At  last  she  said,  "I'll  think  about  it." 

She  was  obliged  to  think  about  it.  All  the  forenoon, 
as  the  train  ambled  over  the  plain  toward  the  village  in 
which  Professor  Taft  had  established  his  bank,  I  kept  it 
in  her  mind.  "It  may  be  a  long  time  before  we  have 
another  chance  to  visit  Colorado.  It  will  be  glorious  winter 
up  there.  Think  of  Marshall  Pass,  think  of  Uncompagre, 
think  of  the  Toltec  Gorge!"  My  enthusiasm  mounted. 
"Ouray  will  be  like  a  town  in  the  Andes.  We  must  plan 
to  stay  there  at  least  two  days." 

She  fell  into  silence,  a  dazed  yet  smiling  silence,  but  when 
at  last  I  said,  "Every  hour  in  the  low  country  is  a  loss — 
let's  be  married  to-morrow,"  she  shook  her  head.  I  had 
gone  too  far. 

She  confessed  that  a  stay  in  Hanover  was  in  the  nature 
of  a  punishment.  "I  never  liked  it  here,  and  neither  did 
my  little  mother,"  she  said,  and  then  she  described  her 
mother's  life  in  Hanover.  "I  was  called  home  to  nurse  her 
in  the  last  days  of  her  illness,"  she  explained.  "Poor  little 
mamma!  She  came  out  here  unwillingly  in  the  first  place, 
and  I  always  resented  her  living  so  far  away  from  the  city. 
After  her  death  I  seldom  came  here.  Father  does  not  care. 
He  is  so  absorbed  in  his  business  and  in  his  books  that  it 
doesn't  matter  where  he  lives." 

Professor  Taft  and  his  son,  Florizel,  were  both  at  the 
train  to  meet  Zulime,  and  both  were  properly  amazed  when 
I  appeared.  As  a  totally  unexpected  guest  I  was  a  calamity 
• — but  they  greeted  me  cordially.  What  Zulime  said  in 
explanation  of  my  presence  I  do  not  know,  but  the  family 
accepted  me  as  an  inevitable  complication. 

134 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

My  lameness,  which  dated  from  that  ride  down  the 
Navajo  canon,  persisted,  which  was  another  worriment; 
for  Zulime  was  too  busy  with  sewing-women  to  give  much 
time  to  me  and  walking  was  very  painful,  hence  I  spent  most 
of  my  day  down  at  the  bank,  talking  with  my  prospective 
father-in-law,  who  interested  me  much  more  than  the  sordid 
little  village  and  its  empty  landscape.  He  was  a  sturdy, 
slow-moving  man  with  long,  gray  beard,  a  powerful  and 
strongly  individual  thinker,  almost  as  alien  to  his  surround 
ings  as  a  Hindoo  Yoghi  would  have  been.  With  the  bland 
air  of  a  kindly  teacher  he  met  his  customers  in  the  outer 
office  and  genially  discoursed  to  them  of  whatever  happened 
to  be  in  his  own  mind — what  they  were  thinking  about  was 
of  small  account  to  him. 

As  a  deeply-studied  philosopher  of  the  old-fashioned  sort, 
his  words,  even  when  addresesd  to  a  German  farmer,  were 
deliberately  chosen,  and  his  sentences  stately,  sonorous  and 
precise.  Regarding  me  as  a  man  of  books,  he  permitted 
himself  to  roam  widely  over  the  fields  of  medieval  history, 
and  to  wander  amid  the  gardens  of  ancient  faiths  and  dimly 
remembered  thrones. 

Although  enormously  learned,  his  knowledge  was  ex 
pressed  in  terms  of  the  past.  His  quotations,  I  soon  dis 
covered,  were  almost  entirely  confined  to  books  whose 
covers  were  of  a  faded  brown.  His  scientists,  his  historians 
were  all  of  the  Victorian  age  or  antecedent  thereto. 
Breasted  and  Ferrero  did  not  concern  him.  His  biologists 
were  of  the  time  of  Darwin,  his  poets  of  an  age  still  earlier, 
and  yet,  in  spite  of  his  musty  citations,  he  was  a  master 
mind.  He  knew  what  he  knew  (he  guessed  at  nothing), 
and,  sitting  there  in  that  bare  little  bank,  I  listened  in 
silence  what  time  he  marched  from  Zoroaster  down  to 
Charlemagne,  and  from  Rome  to  Paris.  He  quoted  from 
Buckle  and  Bacon  and  Macaulay  till  I  marveled  at  the 

135 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

contrast  between  his  great  shaggy  head  and  its  common 
place  surroundings,  for  in  the  midst  of  a  discussion  of  the 
bleak  problems  of  Agnosticism,  or  while  considering 
Gibbon's  contribution  to  the  world's  stock  of  historical 
knowledge,  certain  weather-worn  Bavarian  farmers  came 
and  went,  studying  us  with  half-stupid,  half-suspicious 
glances,  having  no  more  kinship  with  Don  Carlos  Taft  than 
so  many  Comanches. 

It  is  probable  that  the  lonely  old  scholar  rejoiced  in  me 
as  a  comprehending,  or  at  least  a  sympathetic,  listener,  for 
he  talked  on  and  on,  a  steady,  slow-moving  stream.  I  was 
content  to  listen.  That  I  allowed  him  to  think  of  me  as 
a  fellow-student,  I  confess,  but  in  my  failure  to  undeceive 
him  I  was  only  adding  to  the  comfort  which  he  took  in  my 
company.  It  would  have  been  a  cruelty  to  have  confessed 
my  ignorance.  It  was  after  all  only  a  negative  deception, 
one  which  did  neither  of  us  any  harm. 

Furthermore,  I  was  aware  that  he  was  in  a  sense  "trying 
me  out."  He  not  only  wanted  to  measure  my  understand 
ing — he  was  especially  eager  to  know  what  my  "religion" 
was.  He  dreaded  to  find  me  a  sectarian,  and  when  he 
discovered  that  I,  too,  was  a  student  of  Darwin  and  a 
disciple  of  Herbert  Spencer,  he  frankly  expressed  his 
pleasure.  He  rejoiced,  also,  in  the  fact  that  I  was  earning 
my  own  living,  and  to  him  I  seemed  to  be  in  possession  of 
a  noble  income.  With  all  his  love  of  scholarship  he  remained 
the  thrifty  son  of  New  England. 

Here  again  I  fear  I  permitted  him  to  assume  too  much, 
but  when  one's  prospective  father-in-law  is  asking  how  one 
expects  to  support  a  wife,  one  is  tempted  to  give  a  slightly 
more  favorable  report  than  the  conditions  will  warrant. 
I  explained  my  contract  with  Macmillans,  and  named  the 
prices  I  obtained  for  my  stories,  and  with  these  he  was 
properly  impressed.  It  was  absurd  yet  gratifying  to  have 

136 


A    Judicial     Wedding 

a  son-in-law  who  could  sell  "lies"  for  hard  cash,  and  his 
respect  for  me  increased. 

As  we  walked  homeward  that  night,  I  expressed  my  wish 
to  have  the  marriage  a  judicial  ceremony.  "I  make  no 
objection  to  having  the  service  read  by  a  clergyman,"  I 
explained,  "but  I  prefer  to  employ  the  highest  legal  author 
ity  in  the  county — a  judge,  if  possible.  However,  I  will 
leave  it  all  to  Zulime.  As  an  individualist  I  consider  her 
a  full  and  equal  partner  in  all  phases  of  this  enterprise. 
I  do  not  expect  her  to  even  promise  to  obey  me,  but  I  hope 
she  will  always  find  my  requests  reasonable — if  she  does  not, 
she  has  the  right  to  ignore  them.  Her  signature  shall  be 
as  good  as  mine  at  the  bank." 

This  statement  startled  the  banker,  for  he  held  rather 
old-fashioned  ideas  concerning  women  and  money;  but 
Zulime  was  his  favorite  child,  and  he  hastened  to  assure  me 
that  she  would  not  waste  my  substance.  "I  think  we  can 
induce  the  district  judge  to  come  over  and  perform  the 
ceremony,"  he  concluded. 

If  my  notion  to  employ  a  judge  of  the  district  shocked 
my  bride,  she  artfully  deceived  me,  for  she  cheerfully  con 
sented,  and  a  day  or  two  later,  with  her  brother  Florizel  for 
a  guide,  I  drove  over  to  the  county  town  and  laid  my 
request  before  Judge  Sturgis  of  the  District  Court. 

The  judge  knew  Don  Carlos  and  (as  a  reader  of  the 
magazines)  had  some  knowledge  of  me;  therefore  he  at  once 
declared  his  willingness  to  assist.  "It  will  be  an  honor," 
he  added  heartily;  "I'll  adjourn  court  if  necessary.  You 
may  depend  on  me." 

He  also  agreed  to  meet  our  wishes  as  to  the  character  of 
the  ceremony.  '"I'll  make  it  as  short  as  you  like,"  he  said. 
"I'll  reduce  it  to  its  lowest  legal  terms,"  and  with  this 
understanding  I  procured  my  license  and  returned  to 
Hanover. 

137 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

In  spite  of  all  these  practical  details  the  whole  adventure 
seemed  curiously  unreal,  as  though  it  concerned  some  other 
individual,  some  character  in  one  of  my  novels.  It  was  a 
play  in  which  I  acted  as  manager  rather  than  as  leading  man. 
There  was  nothing  in  all  this  preparation  which  remotely 
suggested  any  of  the  weddings  in  which  I  had  been  con 
cerned  as  witness,  and  I  suspect  that  Zulime  was  almost 
equally  unconvinced  of  its  reality.  Poor  girl!  It  was  all 
as  far  from  the  wedding  of  her  girlish  dreams  as  her  bride 
groom  fell  short  of  the  silver-clad  knight  of  romance,  but  I 
promised  her  that  she  would  find  something  grandiose  and 
colorful  in  our  wedding  journey.  "Our  wedding  will  be 
prosaic,  but  wait  until  you  see  the  sunset  light  on  the 
Crestones!  Our  week  in  the  High  Country  shall  be  a 
poem." 

This  was  a  characteristic  attitude  with  me.     I  was  always 

saying,  "Wait!    These  flowers  are  lovely,  but  those  just 

Oahead  of  us  are  more  beautiful  still."     Zulime's  attitude, 

as  I  soon  discovered,  was  precisely  opposite:  "Let  us  make 

the  most  of  the  flowers  at  our  hand,"  was  her  motto. 

The  Taft  home  had  something  of  the  same  unesthetic 
quality  which  marked  Neshonoc.  It  was  simple,  comfort 
able,  and  entirely  New  England.  Throughout  the  stern 
vicissitudes  of  his  life  on  the  Middle  Border,  Don  Carlos 
Taft  had  carried  the  memories  and  the  accents  of  his  New 
Hampshire  town.  His  beginnings  had  been  as  laboriously 
difficult  as  those  of  my  father.  In  many  ways  they  were 
alike;  that  is  to  say,  they  were  both  Yankee  in  training 
and  tradition. 

At  last  the  epoch-marking  day  came  marching  across  the 
eastern  plain.  The  inevitable  bustle  began  with  the  dawn. 
I  packed  my  trunk  and  dispatched  it  to  the  station  in 
confident  expectation  of  our  mid-afternoon  departure,  and 
Zulime  did  the  same,  although  it  must  have  seemed  more 

138 


A    Judicial    Wedding 

illusory  to  her  than  to  me.  The  Judge  arrived  precisely  at 
noon,  and  at  half-past  twelve  the  family  solemnly  gathered 
in  the  living-room,  and  there,  in  plain  traveling  garb, 
Zulime  Taft  stood  up  with  me,  while  the  Judge  gravely 
initiated  her  into  a  perilous  partnership,  a  coalition  in  which 
she  took  the  heaviest  chances  of  sorrow  and  regret. 

The  Judge  was  as  good  as  his  word.  He  made  the  cere 
mony  a  short  but  very  serious  interchange  of  intentions, 
and  at  last,  in  sonorous  and  solemn  tones,  pronounced  us 
man  and  wife. 

Altogether,  it  did  not  take  five  minutes,  and  then,  at 
twelve-forty,  while  the  man  of  law  was  writing  out  the 
certificate,  the  "breakfast"  was  announced  and  we  all  sat 
down  to  what  was  really  a  dinner,  a  meal  to  which  the 
Judge  did  full  justice,  for  he  had  been  up  since  early 
morning,  and  had  ridden  twelve  or  fifteen  miles. 

If  the  old  professor  retained  any  anxieties  concerning  his 
daughter's  future,  he  masked  them  with  a  smile  and  dis 
coursed  genially  of  the  campaigns  of  Cyrus — or  some  such 
matter.  At  the  close  of  the  meal,  the  Judge,  comfortable 
and  friendly,  rose  to  go.  With  him,  he  said,  it  had  not  only 
been  a  duty  but  a  pleasure,  and  as  he  had  given  to  our  brief 
wedding  just  the  right  touch  of  dignity,  we  were  grateful 
to  him.  It  was  the  kind  of  service  which  cannot  be 
obtained  by  any  fee. 

At  four  o'clock  we  took  a  dusty,  hesitating  local  train 
for  the  small  town  in  Nebraska  where  we  expected  to  catch 
the  express  for  Colorado  Springs.  In  such  drab  and  un- 
romantic  fashion  did  Zulime  Taft  and  Hamlin  Garland 
begin  their  long  journey  together.  "But  wait!"  I  repeated. 
"Wait  till  you  see  the  Royal  Gorge  and  Shavano!" 


139 


CHAPTER  TEN 

The    New    Daughter    and    Thanks 
giving 

AT  about  half-past  seven  of  a  clear  November  morning 
I  called  my  bride  to  the  car  window  and  presented 
to  her,  with  the  air  of  a  resident  proprietor,  a  first  view  of 
Pike's  Peak,  a  vast  silver  dome  rising  grandly  above  the 
Rampart  Range.  "Well,  there  it  is,"  I  remarked.  "What 
do  you  think  of  it?" 

Her  cry  of  surprise  and  her  words  of  delight  were  both 
entirely  genuine.  "Oh,  how  beautiful!"  she  exclaimed,  as 
soon  as  she  recovered  breath. 

It  was  beautiful.  Snow  covered,  flaming  like  burnished 
marble,  the  range,  with  high  summits  sharply  set  against 
the  cloudless  sky,  upreared  in  austere  majesty,  each  bleak 
crag  gilded  with  the  first  rays  of  the  morning  sun.  Above 
the  warm,  brown  plain  the  giants  towered  remotely  alien, 
like  ancient  kings  on  purple  thrones,  and  the  contrast  of 
their  gleaming  drifts  of  snow,  with  the  dry,  grassy  foothills 
through  which  we  were  winding  our  way,  was  like  that  of 
deep  winter  set  opposite  to  early  September.  However, 
I  would  not  permit  Zulime  to  exhaust  her  vocabulary  of 
admiration.  "Keep  some  of  your  adjectives  till  we  reach 
Ouray,"  I  said  with  significant  gravity. 

Before  the  train  came  to  a  stop  at  the  platform  of 
Colorado  Springs,  I  caught  sight  of  the  red,  good-humored 
face  of  Gustave,  coachman  for  Louis  Ehrich,  one  of  my 
Colorado  friends.  Gustave  was  standing  beside  the  road 

140 


The  New  Daughter  and  Thanksgiving 

wagon  in  which  I  had  so  often  ridden,  and  when  he  saw 
me  alight  he  motioned  to  me.  "You  are  to  come  with  me," 
he  explained  as  I  approached.  "I  have  orders  to  bring  you 
at  once  to  the  house — breakfast  is  waiting  for  you." 

I  had  written  to  the  Ehrichs,  saying  that  my  wife  would 
be  with  me  in  the  Springs  for  a  few  days,  and  that  I  wanted 
them  to  meet  her — but  I  did  not  expect  to  be  met  or  to 
receive  an  invitation  to  breakfast. 

Zulime  hesitated  till  I  assured  her  that  the  Ehrichs  were 
old  friends  and  not  the  kind  of  people  who  say  one  thing 
and  mean  another.  "They  will  never  permit  us  to  go  to 
the  hotel — I  know  them."  With  that  she  consented,  and 
fifteen  minutes  later  Louis  and  Henriette  met  us  at  their 
threshold  and  took  Zulime  to  their  hearts,  as  though  they 
had  known  her  for  years. 

The  house  stood  on  the  bank  of  a  stream,  and,  from  the 
windows  of  the  room  they  gave  us,  the  Lord  of  the  Range 
loomed  in  distant  majesty  directly  above  the  Garden  of 
the  Gods,  and  our  first  day  of  married  life  was  filled  with 
splendor.  Each  hour  of  that  day  had  for  us  its  own  magical 
color,  its  own  drama  of  flying  cloud  and  resisting  rock. 
From  the  commonplace  Kansas  village  we  had  been  trans 
ported  as  if  by  an  enchanted  carpet  to  a  land  of  beauty 
and  romance,  of  changeful  charm,  a  region  of  which  I  was 
even  then  beginning  to  write  with  joyous  inspiration.  That 
my  bride  and  I  would  forever  recall  this  day  and  this  house 
with  gratitude  and  delight  I  was  even  then  aware. 

"This  compensates  for  the  humble  scene  of  our  wedding, 
doesn't  it?"  I  demanded. 

"It  is  more  than  I  dreamed  of  having,"  she  replied. 

In  truth  no  blood  relations  could  have  been  more  sympa 
thetic,  more  generous,  more  considerate  than  the  Ehrichs. 
They  rejoiced  in  us.  Skilled  and  happy  hosts,  they  did 
their  utmost  to  make  our  honeymoon  an  unforgettable  ex- 

141 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

perience.  Each  hour  of  our  stay  was  arranged  with  kind 
ness.  We  drove,  we  ate,  we  listened  to  music,  with  a 
grateful  wonder  at  our  good  fortune. 

They  would  have  kept  us  indefinitely  had  I  not  carefully 
explained  my  plan  to  show  my  bride  the  Crestones  and 
Marshall  Pass.  "We  must  make  the  Big  Circle  and  get 
back  to  Wisconsin  in  time  for  Thanksgiving,"  I  said  to 
Louis,  who,  as  a  loyal  Colorado  man,  immediately  granted 
the  force  of  this  excuse.  He  understood  also  the  pathos  of 
the  old  mother  in  West  Salem,  watching,  waiting,  longing 
to  see  her  new  daughter.  "You  are  right,"  he  said.  "To 
fail  of  that  dinner  would  be  cruel." 

That  night  we  took  the  Narrow  Gauge  train,  bound  for 
Marshall  Pass  and  the  splendors  of  the  Continental  Divide. 

At  daylight  the  next  morning  we  were  looping  our  way 
up  the  breast  of  Mount  Shavano,  leaving  behind  us  in 
splendid  changing  vista  the  College  Range,  from  whose  lofty 
summits  long  streamers  of  snow  wavered  like  prodigious 
silver  banners.  Unearthly,  radiant  as  the  walls  of  the  sun, 
lonely  and  cold  they  stood.  For  three  hours  we  moved 
amid  colossal  drifts  and  silent  forests,  and  then,  toward 
midday,  our  train  plunged  into  the  snow-sheds  of  the  high 
divide.  When  we  emerged  we  were  sliding  swiftly  down 
into  a  sun-warmed  valley  sloping  to  the  west,  where  hills 
as  lovely  as  jewels  alternated  with  smooth  opalescent  mesas 
over  which  white  clouds  gleamed.  The  whole  wide  basin 
glowed  with  August  colors,  and  yet  from  Montrose  Junction, 
where  we  lunched,  the  rugged  slopes  of  ITncompagre,  hooded 
with  snow  and  dark  with  storms,  were  plainly  visible,  so 
violently  dramatic  was  the  land. 

"From  here  we  proceed  directly  toward  those  peaks," 
I  explained  to  Zulime,  who  was  in  awe  of  the  land  I  was 
exhibiting. 

As  we  approached  the  gateway  to  Ouray,  the  great  white 

142 


The  New  Daughter  and  Thanksgiving 

flakes  began  to  fall  athwart  the  pines,  and  when  we  entered 
the  prodigious  amphitheater  in  which  the  town  is  built,  we 
found  ourselves  again  in  mid-winter,  surrounded  by  icy 
cliffs  and  rimy  firs.  Dazzling  drifts  covered  the  rocks  and 
almost  buried  the  cottages  from  whose  small  windows,  lights 
twinkled  like  gleaming  eyes  of  strange  and  roguish  animals. 
Every  detail  was  as  harmonious  as  an  ideally  conceived 
Christmas  card.  It  was  the  antithesis  of  Kansas. 

Upon  entering  our  room  at  the  hotel,  I  exultantly  drew 
Zulime's  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  sky-line  of  the  moun 
tains  to  the  South  cut  across  the  upper  row  of  our  window 
panes.  "You  are  in  the  heart  of  the  Rockies  now,"  I 
declared  as  if  somehow  that  fact  exalted  me  in  her  regard. 

When  we  stepped  into  the  street  next  morning,  the  snow 
had  ceased  to  fall,  but  the  sky  was  magnificently,  grandly 
savage.  Great  clouds  in  career  across  the  valley  momen 
tarily  caught  and  clung  to  the  crags,  but  let  fall  no  frost, 
and  as  the  sun  rose  laggardly  above  the  dazzlingly  white 
wall,  the  snow-laden  pines  on  the  lower  slopes  appeared 
delicate  as  lace  with  distance.  At  intervals  enormous 
masses  of  vapor,  gray-white  but  richly  shot  with  lavender, 
slfd  suddenly  in,  filling  the  amphitheater  till  all  its  walls 
were  hid,  then  quite  as  suddenly  shifted  and  streamed  away. 
From  time  to  time  vistas  opened  toward  the  west,  wondrous 
aisles  of  blinding  splendor,  highways  leading  downward  to 
the  glowing,  half-hid,  irridescent  plain.  In  all  my  experi 
ence  of  the  mountains  I  had  never  seen  anything  more 
gorgeous,  more  stupendous — what  it  must  have  meant  to  my 
bride,  who  had  never  seen  a  hill,  I  can  only  faintly  divine. 

At  two  o'clock,  the  sky  having  cleared,  I  hired  a  team 
and  sleigh,  and  we  drove  up  the  high-climbing  mining  trail 
which  leads  toward  Telluride,  a  drive  which  in  itself  was 
worth  a  thousand-mile  journey,  an  experience  to  be  remem 
bered  all  our  lives.  Such  majesty  of  silent,  sunny  cliff sJ 

143 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

Such  exquisite  tones,  such  balance  of  lights  and  shadows, 
such  tracery  of  snow-laden  boughs!  It  was  impossible  for 
my  lowland  bride  to  conceive  of  any  mountain  scene  more 
gorgeous,  more  sumptuous,  more  imperial. 

For  two  hours  we  climbed,  and  then,  at  a  point  close 
to  timber-line,  I  reluctantly  halted.  "We  must  turn  here," 
I  said  regretfully.  "It  will  be  dark  by  the  time  we  reach 
the  hotel." 

Slowly  we  rode  back  down  the  valley,  entranced,  almost 
oppressed,  by  the  incommunicable  splendor  of  forested  hills 
and  sunset  sky.  It  was  with  a  sense  of  actual  relief  that  we 
reentered  our  apartment.  Our  eyes  ached  with  the  effort 
to  seize  and  retain  the  radiance  without,  and  our  minds, 
gorged  with  magnificence,  were  grateful  for  the  subdued 
light,  the  ugly  furniture,  the  dingy  walls  of  our  common 
place  little  hotel. 

To  some  of  my  readers,  no  doubt,  this  wedding  trip  will 
seem  a  lunatic,  extravagant  fantasy  on  my  part ;  but  Zulime 
declared  herself  grateful  to  me  for  having  insisted  upon  it, 
and  for  three  days  we  walked  and  drove  by  daylight  or  by 
moonlight  amid  these  grandiose  scenes,  absorbing  with  eager 
senses  the  sounds,  sights  and  colors  which  we  might  never 
again  enjoy,  returning  now  and  then  to  a  discussion  of  our 
future. 

"We'll  go  East  after  our  visit  to  the  old  folks,"  I  declared. 
"This  is  only  the  first  half  of  our  wedding  journey;  the 
other  part  shall  include  Washington,  Boston,  and  New 
York." 

Zulime  looked  somewhat  incredulous  (she  didn't  know 
me  yet),  but  her  eyes  glowed  with  pleasure  at  the  thought 
of  the  capital,  of  which  she  knew  nothing,  and  of  New  York, 
which  she  knew  only  as  a  seaport.  "I  thought  you  were 
poor,"  she  said. 

"So  I  am,"  I  replied,  "but  I  intend  to  educate  you  in 
American  geography." 

144 


The  New  Daughter  and  Thanksgiving 

The  railway  enters  the  Ouray  amphitheater  from  the  west 
and  stops — for  the  very  good  reason  that  it  can  go  no 
farther! — but  from  the  railway  station  a  stage  road  climbs 
the  precipitous  eastern  wall  and  leads  on  to  Red  Mountain, 
as  through  an  Alpine  pass.  Over  this  divide  I  now  planned 
to  drive  to  Silverton,  and  thence  to  Durango  by  way  of 
Las  Animas  Canon.  Zulime,  with  an  unquestioning  faith 
in  me — a  faith  which  I  now  think  of  with  wonder — agreed 
to  this  crazy  plan.  Her  ignorance  of  the  cold,  the  danger 
involved,  made  her  girlishly  eager  to  set  forth.  She  was 
like  a  child  in  her  reliance  on  my  sagacity  and  skill. 

We  left  Ouray,  at  eight  of  a  bitter  morning,  in  a  rude 
sleigh  with  only  a  couple  of  cotton  quilts  to  defend  us  from 
the  cold,  and  when,  after  a  long  climb  up  a  wall  of  stupend 
ous  cliffs  with  roaring  streams  shouting  from  their  icy  beds 
upon  our  right,  we  entered  an  aisle  of  frosty  pines  edging 
an  enormous  ledge,  where  frozen  rills  hung  in  motionless 
cascades,  Zulime,  enraptured  by  the  radiant  avenues  which 
opened  out  at  every  turn  of  our  icy  upward  trail,  became 
blind  to  all  danger.  The  flaming,  golden  light  flinging 
violet  shadows,  vivid  as  stains  of  ink  along  the  crusted 
slopes,  dazzled  her,  caused  her  to  forget  the  icy  wind  or, 
at  any  rate,  to  patiently  endure  it. 

At  Red  Mountain,  a  mournful,  half-buried,  deserted 
mining  town,  we  left  our  sleigh  and  stumbled  into  the 
dingy  little  railway  station,  so  chilled,  so  cramped,  that  we 
could  scarcely  walk,  and  yet  we  did  not  regret  our  ride. 
However,  we  were  glad  of  the  warmth  of  the  dirty  little 
coach  into  which  we  climbed  a  few  minutes  later.  It 
seemed  delightfully  safe  to  Zulime,  and  I  was  careful  not  to 
let  her  know  that  from  this  town  the  train  descended  of 
its  own  weight  all  the  way  to  Silverton! 

Fortunately,  nothing  happened,  and  at  Silverton  we 
changed  to  a  real  train,  with  a  real  engine,  and  as  we 
dropped  into  Las  Animas  Canon  we  left  December  behind. 

145 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

At  six  o'clock  we  emerged  from  the  canon  at  Durango  into 
genial  September — or  so  it  seemed  after  our  day  of  mid 
winter  in  the  heights.  Next  day  we  returned  to  Colorado 
Springs. 

Our  stay  in  the  mountains  was  at  an  end,  but  the  mem 
ory  of  those  burnished  domes,  those  dark-hued  forests,  and 
the  sound  of  those  foaming  streams,  remain  with  us  to  this 
day. — All  the  way  down  the  long  slope  to  the  Mississippi 
River,  we  reverted  to  this  "circuit,"  recalling  its  most  im 
pressive  moments,  its  noblest  vistas.  It  had  been  for  my 
bride  a  procession  of  wonders,  a  colossal  pageant — to  me 
it  was  a  double  satisfaction  because  of  her  delight.  With 
a  feeling  that  I  had  in  some  degree  atoned  for  my  par 
simony  in  the  matter  of  an  engagement  ring  and  for  the 
drab  prose  of  our  marriage  ceremony,  I  brought  the  first 
half  of  our  wedding  journey  to  a  close  in  Chicago. 

I  now  looked  forward  to  the  meeting  between  my  mother 
and  her  new  daughter.  This  was,  after  all,  the  important 
part  of  my  venture.  Would  my  humble  home  content  my 
artist  bride? 

In  preparation  I  began  to  sing  small.  "Don't  expect  too 
much  of  the  Garland  Homestead,"  I  repeated.  "It  is  only 
an  angular,  slate-colored  farm-house  without  a  particle  of 
charm  outside  or  in.  It  is  very  far  from  being  the  home 
I  should  like  you  to  be  mistress  of,  and  my  people  you 
must  bear  in  mind,  are  pioneers,  survivals  of  the  Border. 
They  are  remote  from  all  things  urban." 

To  this  the  New  Daughter  responded  loyally,  "I  am  sure 
I  shall  like  your  home  and  I  know  I  shall  love  your  mother." 

As  women  of  her  race  have  done  from  the  most  imme 
morial  times,  she  had  left  her  own  tribe  and  was  about  to 
enter  the  camp  of  her  captor,  but  she  pretended  to  happi 
ness,  resolute  to  make  the  best  of  whatever  came. 

Our  friends  in  Chicago  smiled  when  I  told  them  where  we 
had  been.  Lorado  said,  "A  Honeymoon  in  the  heart  of  the 

146 


The  New  Daughter  and  Thanksgiving 

Rockies  is  just  like  you" — but  I  cared  nothing  for  his 
gibes  so  long  as  Zulime  was  content,  and  I  had  but  to 
over-hear  her  account  of  her  trip  to  be  reassured.  To 
her  it  had  been  a  noble  exploration  into  a  marvelous  country. 
This  was  the  day  before  Thanksgiving,  and  with  a  knowl 
edge  that  the  old  folks  were  counting  the  hours  which  inter 
vened,  I  wrested  Zulime  from  her  friends,  and  hurried  her 
to  the  train.  "Dear  old  mother!  I  know  just  how  she  is 
waiting  and  watching  for  you.  We  must  not  fail  her." 

It  was  just  daylight  as  we  stepped  down  from  the  Pull 
man  at  West  Salem,  but  father  was  there!  Seated  in  our 
"canopy-top  surrey"  and  holding  restless  ramping  Black 
Dolly  to  her  place,  he  was  too  busy  to  glance  at  us,  but  I 
could  tell,  by  the  set  of  his  head,  that  he  was  emotionally 
intense. 

"There's  your  new  father,"  I  said,  pointing  him  out  to 
Zulime,  "and  that  is  your  family  coach." 

Father  couldn't  even  shake  hands,  for  Dolly  was  still 
pawing  and  plunging  but  he  smiled  as  we  approached  and 
called  out  in  reference  to  Dolly,  "She'll  quiet  down  in  a 
minute." 

While  the  train  was  pulling  out  I  explained  to  Zulime  that 
Dolly's  fury  was  all  assumed.  "She'll  soon  be  stolid  as  a 
stump." 

It  wasn't  in  the  least  the  tender  meeting  I  had  expected 
to  enjoy,  but  when  at  last  my  father  was  able  to  reach 
his  hand  down  to  Zulime,  he  said,  "I'm  glad  to  meet  you, 
my  daughter,"  and  the  tenderness  in  his  vibrant  voice 
touched  me.  "We  were  afraid  you  weren't  coming,"  he 
added,  and  a  little  later  I  saw  him  wipe  the  tears  from  his 
eyes.  The  fact  that  he  used  a  bandanna  for  this  purpose, 
did  not  destroy  the  moving  quality  of  his  emotion. 

The  village  looked  woefully  drab  and  desolate  under  that 
misty  November  sky.  The  elm  trees,  stripped  of  every 

147 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

leaf,  the  gardens  weedy,  ragged  and  forlorn,  together  with 
the  ugly  little  houses  suggested  the  sordid  reality  of  the  life 
to  which  I  had  brought  my  bride.  It  was  all  a  far  cry 
from  the  towering  cliffs  and  colorful  canons  of  Colorado. 

The  Homestead  shared  in  the  general  ugliness  of  that 
rain-swept  dawn.  Its  maples  were  gaunt  skeletons,  its 
garden  a  sodden  field  over  which  the  chickens  were  wan 
dering  in  sad  and  aimless  fashion.  To  my  city-bred  wife 
this  home-coming  must  have  been  a  cruel  shock,  but  it  was 
the  best  I  could  do,  and  whatever  the  girl  felt,  she  con 
cealed  with  a  smile,  resolute  to  make  the  best  of  me  and 
mine. 

Mother  was  waiting  for  us  on  the  porch,  tremulous  with 
excitement,  too  eager  to  remain  in  doors,  and  as  I  took  her 
in  my  arms,  and  kissed  her,  I  said,  "Mother,  I've  brought 
your  new  daughter." 

For  just  a  moment  she  hesitated  (the  grace  and  dignity 
of  the  tall  girl  awed  her,  confused  her) ,  then  Zulime  went  to 
her,  and  the  two  women,  so  diverse,  yet  so  dear  to  me, 
met  in  an  embrace  of  mutual  love  and  confidence. 

Isabel  Garland  entered  into  possession  of  the  daughter 
she  had  so  long  hoped  for,  and  Zulime  Taft  became  a 
member  of  the  household  of  which  Richard  Garland  was 
the  head. 

Breakfast  was  waiting  for  us,  a  noble  meal,  a  sumptuous 
wedding  breakfast,  for  mother  and  her  two  helpers  (daugh 
ters  of  a  neighboring  farmer),  had  been  up  since  five 
o'clock  and  while  it  was  a  good  deal  like  a  farmer's  Sunday 
dinner,  Zulime  thanked  the  girls  when  father  presented 
them  to  her,  but  was  a  bit  startled  when  one  of  them  took 
her  seat  at  the  table  with  us.  She  was  not  accustomed  to 
this  democratic  custom  of  the  village. 

My  aunt,  Susan  Bailey,  a  gentle,  frail  little  body  also 
joined  our  circle,  adding  one  more  pair  of  eyes  to  those 
whose  scrutiny  must  have  been  somewhat  trying  to  the 

148 


The  New  Daughter  and  Thanksgiving 

bride.  To  meet  these  blunt,  forthright  folk  at  such  a  table 
without  betraying  amusement  or  surprise,  required  tact,  but 
the  New  Daughter  succeeded  in  winning  them  all,  even 
Mary,  the  cook,  who  was  decidedly  difficult. 

Almost  immediately  after  taking  his  seat  my  father  be 
gan:  "Well  now,  daughter,  you  are  the  captain.  Right 
here  I  abdicate.  Anything  you  want  done  shall  be  done. 
What  you  say  about  things  in  the  kitchen  shall  be  law. 
I  will  furnish  the  raw  materials — you  and  the  girls  must  do 
the  rest.  We  like  to  be  bossed,  don't  we,  Belle?"  He  ended 
addressing  mother. 

In  her  concise,  simple  fashion,  she  replied:  "Yes,  the 
house  is  yours.  I  turn  it  all  over  to  you." 

It  was  evident  that  all  this  had  been  discussed  many 
times  for  they  seemed  in  haste  to  get  its  statement  off  their 
minds,  and  I  could  not  check  them  or  turn  tliem  aside. 

Zulime  made  light  of  it.  "I'd  rather  not  be  captain," 
she  laughingly  protested.  "I'd  rather  be  passenger  for  a 
while." 

Father  was  firm.  "No,  we  need  a  commanding  officer, 
and  you  must  take  charge.  Now  I've  got  a  turkey  out 
there — and  cranberries —  He  was  off!  He  told  just  what 
he  had  laid  in  for  the  dinner,  and  ended  by  saying,  "If 
there's  anything  I've  forgot,  you  just  let  me  know,  and  I'll 
go  right  up  town  and  get  it." 

As  he  talked,  the  tones  of  his  resonant  voice,  the  motions 
of  his  hands,  the  poise  of  his  head,  brought  back  to  me  a 
boyish  feeling  of  subordination.  I  laughed,  but  I  submitted 
to  his  domination,  entirely  willing  that  he  should  play  the 
part  of  the  commander  for  the  last  time.  It  was  amusing, 
but  it  had  its  pathetic  side  for  my  mother's  silence  was 
significant  of  her  weakness.  She  said  nothing — not  a  word, 
but  with  Zulime  sitting  beside  her,  she  was  content,  so 
happy  she  could  not  find  words  in  which  to  express  her 
satisfaction.  Her  waiting  was  at  an  end! 

149 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

My  father  made  a  handsome  picture.  His  abundant  white 
hair,  his  shapely  beard,  and  his  keen  profile  pleased  me. 
Though  a  little  stooped,  he  was  still  alert  and  graceful,  and 
his  voice  rang  like  a  trumpet  as  he  entered  upon  an  account 
of  his  pioneer  experiences. 

"I've  always  lived  on  the  Border,"  he  explained,  "and  I 
don't  know  much  about  the  ways  of  city  folks,  so  you  must 
excuse  me  when  I  do  the  wrong  thing.  My  will  is  the  best 
in  the  world,  and  I'll  do  anything  I  can  to  please  you." 

That  breakfast  was  the  exact  opposite  of  a  "Continental 
Breakfast."  Steak,  doughnuts,  buckwheat  cakes,  cookies, 
apple  sauce  made  me  groan  but  Zulime  smiled.  She  under 
stood  the  care  which  had  gone  into  its  making. 

When  at  last  she  and  I  were  alone  in  my  study  I  began, 
"Well,  how  do  you  like  West  Salem  and  the  Garlands?" 

"Your  mother  is  a  dear!"  she  replied,  and  her  voice  was 
convincing — "and  I  like  your  father.  He's  very  good  look 
ing.  And  the  breakfast  was — well  it  was  like  one  of  your 
stories — Do  you  always  have  steak  and  doughnuts  for 
breakfast?" 

"No,"  I  replied,  "not  always,  but  breakfast  is  a  real 
meal  with  us." 

The  sky  darkened  and  a  sleety  rain  set  in  during  the 
forenoon,  but  mother  did  not  mind  the  gloom  outside,  for 
within  she  had  her  daughter.  Upon  our  return  to  the  sitting 
room,  she  led  Zulime  out  into  the  kitchen  to  take  account 
of  all  that  was  going  on  for  dinner,  and  while  the  maids, 
with  excited  faces  stood  about  waiting  for  orders  from 
their  new  boss,  Zulime  laughingly  protested  that  she  had 
no  wish  to  interfere.  "Go  on  in  your  own  way,"  she  said. 

To  me,  on  her  return  to  the  sitting  room,  she  exclaimed: 
"You  should  see  the  food  in  preparation  out  there!  Enough 
to  feed  all  the  Eagle's  Nest  campers. — How  many  are  com 
ing  to  dinner?" 

"No  one  but  the  McClintocks — and  only  a  few  of  them," 


The  New  Daughter  and  Thanksgiving 

I  soberly  replied.  "Uncle  William  and  Aunt  Maria,  Frank 
and  Lorette — and  Deborah,  all  old  people  now.  I  don't 
know  of  any  one  else."  In  fact,  we  had  less  than  this 
number,  for  Maria  was  not  well  enough  to  come  out  in  the 
rain. 

Our  circle  was  small,  but  the  spirit  of  Thanksgiving 
was  over  it,  and  when  I  saw  my  stately  city  wife  sitting 
among  my  rough-hewn  relations,  listening  to  the  quaint 
stories  of  Uncle  Frank,  or  laughing  at  the  humorous  sallies 
of  Aunt  Lorette,  I  wondered  what  they  thought  of  her. 
She  made  a  lovely  picture,  and  all — even  caustic  Deborah — 
capitulated  to  her  kindliness  and  charm.  If  she  had  failed 
of  complete  comprehension  and  sympathy  I  could  not  have 
blamed  her,  but  to  have  her  perfectly  at  home  among  these 
men  and  women  of  the  vanishing  Border  displayed  her  in  a 
new  and  noble  guise. 

If  anything  was  lacking — any  least  quality  of  adaptation, 
it  was  supplied  when,  that  evening,  my  uncles  and  my 
father  discovered  that  Zulime  could  not  only  read  music, 
but  that  she  could  play  all  the  old  songs  which  they  loved 
to  have  me  sing.  This  accomplishment  completed  their 
conquest,  for  under  her  deft  hands  the  piano  revived  the 
wistful  melodies  of  Minnie  Minturn,  Maggie,  and  Nellie 
Wildwood,  and  when  my  mother's  voice,  sweet  as  ever,  but 
weak  and  hesitant,  joined  with  mine  in  singing  for  our 
guests,  I  was  both  glad  and  sad,  glad  of  my  young  wife, 
sad  with  a  realization  of  my  mother's  weakness  and  age. 

She  did  not  reproach  me  for  not  bringing  the  daughter 
sooner.  She  had  but  one  regret.  "I  wish  Frank  was  here," 
she  said,  her  thought  going  out  to  her  other  son. 

How  far  away,  how  remote,  how  tender  that  evening 
seems  to  me  after  more  than  twenty  years  work  and  travel ! 
To  Zulime  it  unrolled  like  a  scene  from  one  of  my  novels, 
to  me  it  was  the  closing,  fading  picture  of  an  era,  the  end  of 
an  epoch,  the  passing  of  a  race,  for  the  Garlands  and  Mc- 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

Clintocks,  warriors  of  the  western  conquest,  representatives 
of  a  heroic  generation  were  even  then  basking  in  the  light 
of  a  dying  camp-fire,  recounting  the  deeds  of  brave  days 
gone. 

When  we  were  again  alone  in  my  study,  Zulime  said, 
"I'm  going  to  enjoy  it  here.  I  like  your  people,  and  I 
hope  they  liked  me." 

#**### 

It  was  in  this  humble  fashion  that  I  brought  to  my  mother 
the  new  daughter  for  whom  she  had  longed,  and  it  was  in 
this  homely  way  that  the  Garlands  and  McClintocks  received 
my  wife.  Amid  surroundings  which  were  without  grace  of 
art  or  touch  of  poetry,  the  informal  and  very  plain  cere 
mony  took  place,  but  the  words  were  sincere,  and  the 
forms  and  features  of  the  speakers  deeply  significant  of  the 
past.  No  matter  what  my  mother's  storms  and  sorrows 
had  been,  she  was  now  at  peace.  With  a  smiling  face  she 
confronted  the  future. 


152 


CHAPTER  ELEVEN 

My    Father's    Inheritance 

AT  half-past  six  on  the  morning  following  our  arrival 
at  the  Homestead?  my  father  opened  the  stairway 
door  and  shouted,  just  as  he  had  been  wont  to  do  in  the 
days  when  I  was  a  boy  on  the  farm — "Hamlin!  Time  to 
get  up!"  and  with  a  wry  grin  I  called  to  Zulime  and  ex 
plained,  "In  our  family,  breakfast  is  a  full  and  regular  meal 
at  which  every  member  of  the  household  is  expected 
promptly  at  seven." 

It  was  not  yet  fully  dawn  and  the  thought  of  rising  in  a 
cold  room  at  that  time  of  night  was  appalling  to  a  city 
woman,  but  with  heroic  resolution  Zulime  dressed,  and 
followed  me  down  the  narrow  stairway  to  the  lamp-lit 
dining-room,  where  a  steaming  throng  of  dishes,  containing 
oatmeal,  potatoes,  flap-jacks  and  sausage  (supplemented  by 
cookies,  doughnuts  and  two  kinds  of  jam),  invited  us  to 
start  the  day  with  indigestion. 

The  dim  yellow  light  of  the  kerosene  lamp,  the  familiar 
smell  of  the  buckwheat  cakes  and  my  father's  clarion  voice 
brought  back  to  me  very  vividly  and  with  a  curious  pang 
of  mingled  pleasure  and  regret,  the  corn-husking  days  when 
I  habitually  ate  by  candlelight  in  order  to  reach  the  field 
by  daybreak.  I  recalled  to  my  father's  memory  one  sadly- 
remembered  Thanksgiving  Day  when  he  forced  us  all  to 
husk  corn  from  dawn  to  sunset  in  order  that  we  might  finish 
the  harvest  before  the  snowstorm  covered  the  fallen  stalks. 
"But  mother's  turkey  dinner  saved  the  day,"  I  remarked  to 

153 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

Zulime.  "Nothing  can  ever  taste  so  good  as  that  meal.  As 
we  came  into  the  house,  cold,  famished  and  weary,  the  smell 
of  the  kitchen  was  celestial." 

My  mother  smiled  but  father  explained  in  justification, 
"I  could  feel  a  storm  in  the  air  and  I  knew  that  we  had  just 
time  to  reach  the  last  row  if  we  all  worked,  and  worked 
hard.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  were  all  done  at  four  o'clock." 

"O,  we  worked!"  I  interpolated.  "Frank  and  I  had  no 
vote  in  those  days." 

During  the  week  which  followed,  most  of  my  relatives, 
and  a  good  many  of  the  neighbors,  called  on  us,  and  as  a 
result  Zulime  spent  several  highly  educational  afternoons 
listening  to  the  candid  comments  of  elderly  widows  and 
sharp-eyed  old  maids.  Furthermore,  being  possessed  of  a 
most  excellent  digestion,  she  was  able  to  accept  the  daily 
invitations  to  supper,  at  which  rich  cakes  and  home:made 
jams  abounded.  She  was  also  called  upon  to  examine 
"hand-made  paintings  in  oil,"  which  she  did  with  tender 
care.  No  one  could  have  detected  in  her  smile  anything 
less  than  kindly  interest  in  the  quaint  interior  decorations 
of  the  homes.  Her  comment  to  me  was  a  different  matter. 

That  she  was  an  object  of  commiseration  on  the  part  of 
the  women  I  soon  learned,  for  Mrs.  Dunlap  was  overheard 
to  say,  "She's  altogether  too  good  for  him"  (meaning  me), 
and  Mrs.  Mcllvane,  with  the  candor  of  a  life-long  friend 
ship,  replied,  "That's  what  I  told  Belle." 

Uncle  William,  notwithstanding  a  liking  for  me,  remarked 
with  feeling,  "She's  a  wonder!  I  don't  see  how  you  got 
her." 

To  which  I  replied,  "Neither  do  I." 

In  setting  down  these  derogatory  comments  I  do  not  wish . 
to  imply  that  I  was  positively  detested  but  that  I  was  not 
a  beloved  county  institution  was  soon  evident  to  my  wife. 
Delegations  of  school  children  did  not  call  upon  me,  and 
very  few  of  my  fellow  citizens  pointed  out  my  house  to 

154 


My    Father's    Inheritance 

travelers — at  that  time.  In  truth  little  of  New  England's 
regard  for  authorship  existed  in  the  valley  and  my  head 
possessed  no  literary  aureole.  The  fact  that  I  could — and 
did — send  away  bundles  of  manuscript  and  get  in  return 
perfectly  good  checks  for  them,  was  a  miracle  of  doubtful 
virtue  to  my  relatives  as  well  as  to  my  neighbors.  My 
money  came  as  if  by  magic,  unasked  and  unwarranted,  like 
the  gold  of  sunset.  "I  don't  see  how  you  do  it,"  my  Uncle 
Frank  said  to  me  one  day,  and  his  tone  implied  that  he 
considered  my  authorship  a  questionable  kind  of  legerde 
main,  as  if  I  were,  somehow,  getting  money  under  false 
pretenses. 

Rightly  or  wrongly,  I  had  never  pretended  to  a  keen  con 
cern  in  the  "social  doings"  of  my  village.  Coming  to  the 
valley  out  of  regard  for  my  father  and  mother  and  not  from 
personal  choice,  the  only  folk  who  engaged  my  attention 
were  the  men  and  women  of  the  elder  generation,  rugged 
pioneer  folk  who  brought  down  to  me  something  of  the 
humor,  the  poetry,  and  the  stark  heroism  of  the  Border  in 
the  days  when  the  Civil  War  was  a  looming  cloud,  and  the 
"Pineries"  a  limitless  wilderness  on  the  north.  Men  like 
Sam  McKinley,  William  Fletcher,  and  Wilbur  Dudley  re 
tained  my  friendship  and  my  respect,  but  the  affairs  of  the 
younger  generation  did  not  greatly  concern  me.  In  short,  I 
considered  the  relationship  between  them  and  myself  for 
tuitous. 

Absorbed  in  my  writing  I  was  seldom  in  the  mood  dur 
ing  my  visits  to  entertain  curious  neighbors,  in  fact  I  had 
met  few  people  outside  my  relatives.  All  this  was  very  un 
gracious,  no  doubt,  but  such  had  been  my  attitude  for 
seven  years.  I  came  there  to  work  and  I  worked. 

Even  now,  in  the  midst  of  my  honeymoon,  I  wrote  busily. 
Each  morning  immediately  after  breakfast  I  returned  to 
my  study,  where  the  manuscript  of  a  novel  (Her  Mountain 
Lover)  was  slowly  growing  into  final  shape,  but  in  the 

155 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

afternoons  Zulime  and  I  occasionally  went  sleighing  with 
Dolly  and  the  cutter,  or  we  worked  about  the  house. 

It  was  a  peaceful  time,  with  only  one  thought  to  stir  the 
pool  of  my  content.  I  began  to  realize  that  the  longer 
we  stayed,  the  harder  it  would  be  for  my  mother  to  let 
us  go.  She  could  hardly  permit  her  New  Daughter  to 
leave  the  room.  She  wanted  her  to  sit  beside  her  or 
to  be  in  the  range  of  her  vision  all  day  long.  So  far  from 
resenting  her  loss  of  household  authority  she  welcomed  it, 
luxuriating  in  the  freedom  from  care  which  the  young  wife 
brought. 

This  growing  reliance  upon  Zulime  made  me  uneasy. 
"I  cannot,  even  for  mother's  sake,  ask  my  city-bred  wife 
to  spend  the  winter  in  this  small  snow-buried  hamlet,"  I 
wrote  to  my  brother,  "and,  besides,  I  have  planned  a  wed 
ding  trip  to  Washington  and  New  York." 

In  announcing  to  my  mother  the  date  of  our  departure,  I 
said,  "We  won't  be  gone  long.  We'll  be  back  early  in  the 
spring." 

"See  that  you  do,"  she  replied,  but  her  eyes  were  deep 
and  dark  with  instant  sadness.  She  had  hoped  with  childish 
trust  that  we  would  stay  all  winter  with  her. 

It  was  beautiful  in  Neshonoc  at  this  time.  Deep,  daz 
zling  snows  blanketed  the  hills,  and  covered  the  fields,  and 
frequently  at  sunset  or  later,  after  the  old  people  were 
asleep,  Zulime  and  I  went  for  a  swift  walk  far  out  into  the 
silent  country,  rejoicing  in  the  crisp  clear  air,  and  in  the 
sparkle  of  moonbeams  on  the  crusted  drifts.  At  such  times 
the  satin  sheen  of  sled-tracks  in  the  road,  the  squeal  of  dry 
flakes  under  my  heel  (united  with  the  sound  of  distant  sleigh 
bells)  brought  back  to  me  sadly-sweet  memories  of  boyish 
games,  spelling  school,  and  the  voices  of  girls  whose  laughter 
had  long  since  died  away  into  silence. 

The  blurred  outlines  of  the  hills,  the  barking  of  sentinel 
dogs  at  farm-yard  gates,  and  the  light  from  snow-laden 

156 


My    Father's     Inheritance 

cottage  windows  filled  my  heart  with  a  dull  illogical  ache, 
an  emotion  which  was  at  once  a  pleasure  and  a  pain. 


O,  witchery  of  the  winter  night, 

(With  broad  moon  shouldering  to  the  west), 

Before  my  feet  the  rustling  deeps 

Of  untracked  snows,  in  shimmering  heaps, 

Lie  cold  and  desolate  and  white. 

I  hear  glad  girlish  voices  ring 

Clear  as  some  softly-stricken  string — 

(The  moon  is  sailing  toward  the  west), 

The  sleigh-bells  clash  in  homeward  flight, 

With  frost  each  horse's  breast  is  white — 

(The  moon  is  falling  toward  the  west) — 

"Good  night,  Lettie!" 

"Good  night,  Ben!" 
(The  moon  is  sinking  at  the  west) — 
"Good  night,  my  sweetheart," — Once  again 
The  parting  kiss,  while  comrades  wait 
Impatient  at  the  roadside  gate, 
And  the  red  moon  sinks  beyond  the  we~t! 


Such  moments  as  these  were  meeting  places  of  the  old 
and  the  new,  the  boy  and  the  man.  The  wistful,  haunting 
dreams  of  the  past,  contended  with  the  warm  and  glowing 
fulfillment  of  the  present.  For  the  past  a  song,  for  the 
present  the  woman  at  my  side! 

Whether  Zulime  had  similar  memories  of  her  girlhood  ov 
not  I  do  not  know.  She  was  not  given  to  emotional  expres 
sion,  but  she  several  times  declared  herself  entirely  content 
with  our  orderly  easeful  life  and  professed  herself  willing 
to  remain  in  the  homestead  until  spring.  "I  like  it  here," 
she  repeated,  but  I  was  certain  that  she  liked  the  city  and 
her  own  kind,  better,  and  that  a  longer  stay  would  prove 
a  deprivation  and  a  danger.  After  all,  she  was  an  alien  in 
the  Valley, — a  gracious  and  kindly  alien,  but  an  alien  never 
theless.  Her  natural  habitat  was  among  the  studios  of 

157 


A   Daughter   of    the   Middle    Border 

Chicago  or  New  York,  and  my  sense  of  justice  would  not 
permit  me  to  take  advantage  of  her  loyalty  and  her  wom 
anly  self-sacrifice. 

"Pack  your  trunk,"  I  said  to  her  one  December  day,  with 
an  air  of  high  authority.  "We  are  going  East  in  continua 
tion  of  our  wedding  trip." 

Two  days  after  making  this  decision  we  were  in  Wash 
ington,  at  a  grand  hotel,  surrounded  by  suave  waiters  who 
had  abundant  leisure  to  serve  us,  for  the  reason  that  Con 
gress  was  not  in  session,  and  the  city  was  empty  of  its 
lobbyists  and  its  law-makers. 

The  weather  was  like  October  and  for  several  days  we 
walked  about  the  streets  without  thinking  of  outside  wraps. 
We  went  at  once  to  the  Capitol  from  whose  beautiful  ter 
races  we  could  look  across  the  city,  back  and  upward  along 
our  trail,  above  the  snows  of  Illinois  soaring  on  and  up  into 
the  far  canons  of  the  San  Juan  Divide,  retracing  in  memory 
the  first  half  of  our  wedding  journey  with  a  sense  of  satis 
faction,  a  joy  which  now  took  on  double  value  by  reason  of 
its  contrast  to  the  marble  terrace  on  which  we  stood.  From 
the  luxury  of  our  city  surroundings  the  flaming  splendors 
of  the  Needle  Range  appeared  almost  mystical. 

We  ate  our  Christmas  dinner  in  royal  isolation,  attended 
by  negroes  whose  dusky  countenances  shone  with  holiday 
desire  to  make  us  happy.  With  no  visitors  and  no  duties 
we  gave  ourselves  to  the  business  of  seeing  the  Capitol  and 
enjoying  the  gorgeous  sunlight.  Zulime,  who  looked  at 
everything  in  the  spirit  of  a  youthful  tourist,  was  enchanted 
and  I  played  guide  with  such  enthusiasm  as  a  man  of 
forty  could  bring  to  bear.  It  was  a  new  and  pleasant 
schooling  for  me,  a  time  which  I  look  back  upon  with  wist 
ful  satisfaction,  after  more  than  twenty  years. 

Philadelphia,  our  next  stop,  had  an  especial  significance 
to  me  (something  quite  apart  from  its  historical  signifi 
cance).  Outwardly  professing  a  keen  interest  in  the  Lib- 

158 


My    Father's    Inheritance 

erty  Bell,  Independence  Hall,  and  other  objects  which  en 
thralled  my  young  wife,  I  was  secretly  planning  to  offer 
Lorimer  of  The  Post,  the  serial  rights  of  my  novel  The 
Eagle's  Heart,  and  I  had  an  engagement  to  talk  with  Ed 
ward  Bok  about  a  novelette. 

Bok,  a  friend  of  several  years'  standing,  received  us  most 
cordially,  and  Mrs.  Bok,  who  came  in  next  day  to  meet  us, 
not  only  instantly  and  heartily  approved  of  my  wife,  but 
quite  openly  said  so,  a  fact  which  added  another  quality 
to  the  triumphal  character  of  our  progress.  I  was  certain 
that  all  of  my  other  Eastern  friends  would  find  her  ad 
mirable. 

We  reached  New  York  on  New  Year's  Eve,  and  the 
streets  were  roaring  with  the  customary  riot  of  youth,  but 
in  our  rooms  at  the  Westminster  we  were  as  remote  from  the 
tumult  as  if  we  had  been  at  the  bottom  of  a  Colorado  mine. 
We  would  have  heard  nothing  of  the  horns  and  hootings  of 
the  throngs  had  not  Zulime  expressed  a  wish  to  go  forth  and 
mix  with  them.  With  a  feeling  of  disgust  of  the  hoodlums 
who  filled  Broadway,  I  took  her  as  far  north  as  Forty- 
second  Street,  but  she  soon  tired  of  the  rude  men  and  their 
senseless  clamor,  and  gladly  returned  to  our  hotel  willing 
to  forget  it  all. 

In  my  diary  I  find  these  words,  "I  am  beginning  the  New 
Year  with  two  thousand  dollars  in  the  bank,  and  a  pending 
sale  which  will  bring  in  as  much  more.  I  feel  pretty  confi 
dent  of  a  living  during  the  year  1900." 

Evidently  the  disposal  of  my  serial  to  Lorimer,  the  re 
sults  of  my  deal  with  Brett,  and  the  growing  interest  of 
other  publishers  in  my  work  had  engendered  a  confidence  in 
the  future  which  I  had  never  before  attained — and  yet  I 
must  admit  that  most  of  my  prosperity  was  expected  rather 
than  secured,  a  promise,  rather  than  a  fulfillment,  and  the 
fact  that  I  permitted  Zulime  to  settle  upon  a  three-room 
suite  in  an  obscure  Hotel  on  Fifteenth  Street,  is  proof  of 

159 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

my  secret  doubts.  Eighteen  dollars  per  week  seemed  a  good 
deal  of  money  to  pay  for  an  apartment. 
'  As  I  think  back  to  this  transaction  I  am  bitten  by  a  kind 
of  remorseful  shame.  It  was  such  a  shabby  little  lodging 
for  my  artist  bride,  and  yet,  at  the  moment,  it  seemed  all 
that  we  could  safely  afford,  and  she  cheerfully  made  the 
best  of  it.  Never  by  word  or  sign  did  she  hint  that  its  tiny 
hall  and  its  dingy  and  unfashionable  furnishings  were  un 
worthy  of  us  both,  on  the  contrary  she  went  ahead  with 
shining  face. 

One  extravagance  I  did  commit,  one  that  I  linger  upon 
with  satisfaction — I  forced  her  to  choose  a  handsome  coat 
instead  of  a  plain  one.  It  was  a  long  graceful  garment  of 
a  rich  brown  color,  an  " Individual  model"  the  saleslady 
called  it.  It  was  very  becoming  to  my  wife — at  any  rate  I 
found  it  so — but  the  price  was  sixty-five  dollars — "marked 
down  from  eighty-five"  the  saleslady  said.  Neither  of  us 
had  ever  worn  a  coat  costing  more  than  twenty-five  dollars 
and  to  pay  almost  three  times  as  much  even  for  a  beautiful 
"creation"  like  this  was  out  of  the  question — and  my  con 
siderate  young  wife  decided  against  it  with  a  sigh. 
.  I  was  in  reckless  mood.  "We  will  take  it,"  I  said  to  the 
saleswoman. 

"Oh  no!  We  can't  afford  it!"  protested  Zulime  in  high 
agitation.  "It  is  impossible! "  She  looked  scared  and  weak. 

"You  may  do  up  the  old  coat,"  I  went  on  in  exalted  tone. 
"My  wife  will  wear  the  new  one/ 

In  a  tremor  of  girlish  joy  and  gratitude  Zulime  walked 
out  upon  the  street  wearing  the  new  garment,  and  the  ex 
pression  of  her  face  filled  me  with  .desire  to  go  on  amazing 
her.  She  had  owned  so  few  pretty  things  in  her  life  that 
I  took  a  keen  pleasure  in  scaring  her  with  sudden  presents. 
I  bought  a  crescent-shaped  brooch  set  with  small  diamonds 
which  cost  one  hundred  dollars — Oh,  I  was  coming  on ! 

[She  is  wearing  these  jewels  yet  and  she  says  she  loves 

1 60 


My    Father's     Inheritance 

them — but  as  I  think  back  to  that  brown  cloak  I  am  not 
so  sure  that  her  approval  was  without  misgiving.  It  may 
be  that  she  secretly  hated  that  coat  for  it  was  an  unusual 
color,  and  while  its  lines  were  graceful  in  my  eyes  it  may 
have  been  "all  out  of  style." — What  became  of  it,  finally, 
I  am  unable  to  say.  No  matter,  it  expressed  for  me  a  noble 
sentiment  and  it  shall  have  a  place  on  this  page  with  the 
Oriental  brooch  and  the  amethyst  necklace.] 

Humble  as  our  quarters  were  we  rejoiced  in  distinguished 
visitors.  William  Dean  Howells  called  upon  us  almost  im 
mediately  and  so  did  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  Edmund  Clar 
ence  Stedman,  John  Burroughs,  and  many  other  of  my 
valued,  old-time  friends.  Furthermore,  with  a  courage  at 
which  I  now  marvel  at,  Zulime  announced  that  we  would  be 
"at  home"  every  afternoon,  and  thereafter  our  tiny  sitting- 
room  was  often  crowded  with  her  friends — for  she  had  be 
gun  to  find  out  many  of  her  artist  acquaintances.  In  fact, 
we  were  forever  discovering  people  she  had  known  in  Paris. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  she  had  met  the  entire  American  Col 
ony  during  her  four  years  in  France. 

My  social  and  domestic  interests  quite  cut  me  off  from 
my  club,  and  we  joked  about  this.  "I  am  now  one  of  the 
newly-weds,"  I  admitted,  "and  my  absence  from  the  club  is 
expected.  Members  invariably  desert  the  club  during  the 
first  year  or  two  of  their  married  life,  but  they  all  come 
back! — Sooner  or  later,  they  drop  in  for  lunch  or  while 
wifey  is  away,  and  at  last  are  indistinguishable  from  the 
bachelors." 

Mrs.  James  A.  Herne,  who  had  meant  so  much  to  me  in 
my  Boston  days,  was  one  of  our  very  first  callers,  and  no 
one  among  all  my  friends  established  herself  more  quickly 
in  my  wife's  regard.  Katharine's  flame-like  enthusiasm,  her 
never-failing  Irish  humor,  and  her  quick  intelligence,  made 
her  a  joyous  inspiration,  and  whilst  she  and  Zulime  com 
pared  experiences  like  a  couple  of  college  girls,  I  sat  and 

161 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

smiled  with  a  kind  of  proprietary  pride  in  both  of  them. 

Fortunately  my  wife  approved  of  my  associates.  "You 
have  a  delightful  circle,"  she  said  one  night  as  we  were  on 
our  way  home  from  a  dinner  with  a  group  of  distinguished 
literary  folk. 

Her  remark  comforted  me.  Having  no  money  with  which 
to  hire  cabs  or  purchase  opera  tickets,  I  could  at  least  share 
with  her  the  good  friendships  I  had  won,  confidently,  be 
lieving  that  she  would  gain  approval, — which  she  did.  Not 
all  of  my  associates  were  as  poor  as  I  (some  of  them,  in 
deed,  lived  in  houses  of  their  own),  but  they  were  mostly 
concerned  with  the  arts  in  some  form,  and  with  such  people 
Zulime  was  entirely  at  ease. 

With  a  lecture  to  deliver  in  Boston  I  asked  her  to  go 
with  me.  "I  cannot  forego  the  pleasure  of  showing  you 
about  'the  Hub/  "  I  urged.  "I  want  Kurd  and  other  of 
my  faithful  friends  of  former  days  to  know  you.  We'll  take 
rooms  at  the  Parker  House  which  used  to  fill  me  with  silent 
awe.  I  want  to  play  the  part,  for  a  day  or  two,  of  the  suc 
cessful  author." 

As  she  had  never  seen  Boston,  she  joyfully  consented, 
and  the  most  important  parts  of  my  grandiose  design  were 
carried  out.  We  took  rooms  at  the  hotel  in  which  I  first 
met  Riley,  and  from  there  we  sent  out  cards  to  several  of 
my  acquaintances.  Kurd,  who  was  still  Literary  Editor  of 
the  Transcript,  came  at  once  to  call,  and  so  did  Flower  of 
the  Arena,  but  for  the  most  part  Zulime  and  I  did  the  call 
ing  for  she  was  eager  to  see  the  homes  and  the  studios  of 
my  artist  friends. 

By  great  good  fortune,  James  A.  Herne  was  playing  "Sag 
Harbor"  at  one  of  the  theaters,  and  as  I  had  told  Zulime  a 
great  deal  about  "Shore  Acres"  and  other  of  Herne's  plays, 
I  hastened  to  secure  seats  for  a  performance.  Herne  was 
growing  old,  and  in  failing  health  but  he  showed  no  decline 
of  power  that  night.  His  walk,  his  voice,  his  gestures  filled 

162 


My    Father's     Inheritance 

me  with  poignant  memories  of  our  first  meeting  in  Ashmont, 
and  our  many  platform  experiences,  while  the  quaint  Long 
Island  play  brought  back  to  me  recollections  of  his  summer 
home  on  Peconic  Bay.  How  much  he  had  meant  to  me  in 
those  days  of  Ibsen  drama  and  Anti-poverty  propaganda! 

To  go  about  Boston  with  my  young  wife  was  like  reliving 
one  by  one  my  student  days.  Many  of  my  haunts  were  un 
changed,  and  friends  like  Dr.  Cross  and  Dr.  Tompkins,  with 
whom  I  had  lived  so  long  in  Jamaica  Plain,  were  only  a 
little  grayer,  a  little  thinner.  They  looked  at  me  with  won 
dering  eyes.  To  them  I  was  an  amazing  success.  Flower, 
still  as  boyish  in  face  and  figure  as  when  I  left  the  city  in 
'92,  professed  to  have  predicted  my  expanding  circle  of 
readers,  and  I  permitted  him  to  imagine  it  wider  than  it 
was. 

Some  of  my  former  neighbors  had  grown  in  grace,  others 
had  stagnated  or  receded,  a  fact  which  saddened  me  a 
little.  A  few  had  been  caught  in  a  swirl  of  backwater,  and 
seemed  to  be  going  round  and  round  without  making  the 
slightest  advance.  Their  talk  was  all  of  small  things,  or 
the  unimportant  events  of  the  past. 

Alas!  Boston  no  longer  inspired  me.  It  seemed  small 
and  alien  and  Cambridge  surprised  me  by  revealing  itself 
as  a  sprawling  and  rather  drab  assemblage  of  wooden  dwell 
ings,  shops  and  factories.  Even  the  University  campus  was 
less  admirable,  architecturally,  than  I  had  supposed  it  to 
be,  and  the  residences  of  its  famous  professors  were  hardly 
the  stately  homes  of  luxury  I  had  remembered  them.  Upon 
looking  up  the  house  on  Berkley  Street  in  which  Howells 
had  lived  while  editing  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  I  found  it 
smaller  and  less  beautiful  than  my  own  house  in  Wisconsin. 
Dr.  Holmes'  mansion  on  "the  water  side  of  Beacon  Street'7 
and  the  palaces  of  Copley  Square  left  me  calm,  their  glamor 
had  utterly  vanished  with  my  youth  (I  fear  Lee's  Hotel  in 
Auburndale  would  have  been  reduced  in  grandeur),  and 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

when  we  took  the  train  for  New  York,  I  confessed  to  a 
feeling  of  sadness,  of  definite  loss. 

Naturally,  inevitably  the  Boston  of  my  early  twenties  had 
vanished.  My  youthful  worship  of  the  city,  my  faith  in 
the  literary  supremacy  of  New  England  had  died  out. 
Manifestly  increasing  in  power  as  a  commercial  center, 
roaring  with  new  interests,  new  powers,  new  people,  the 
Hub  had  lost  its  scholastic  distinction,  its  historic  charm. 
Each  year  would  see  it  more  easily  negligible  in  American 
art.  It  hurt  me  to  acknowledge  this,  it  was  like  losing  a 
noble  ancestor,  but  there  was  no  escape  from  the  conclusion. 

"Little  that  is  new  is  coming  out  of  Boston,"  I  sadly  re 
marked  to  Zulime.  "Her  illustrious  poets  of  the  Civil  War 
period  are  not  being  replaced  by  others  of  National  appeal. 
Her  writers,  her  artists,  like  those  of  Chicago,  Cleveland,  and 
San  Francisco,  are  coming  to  New  York.  New  England 
is  being  drained  of  talent  in  order  that  Manhattan  shall  be 
supreme." 

While  we  were  away  on  this  trip  my  friends  Grace  and 
Ernest  Thompson-Seton  had  sent  out  cards  for  a  party 
"in  honor  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamlin  Garland,"  but  when,  a 
few  nights  later,  a  throng  of  writers,  artists  and  musicians 
filled  the  Seton  studio,  I  was  confirmed  in  a  growing  sus 
picion  that  I  was  only  the  lesser  half  of  a  fortunate  com 
bination.  A  long  list  of  invitations  to  dinner  or  to  luncheon 
testified  to  the  fact  that  while  they  tolerated  me,  they  liked 
my  wife,  and  in  this  judgment  I  concurred. 

One  day  while  calling  on  a  charming  friend  and  fellow- 
fictionist,  Juliet  Wilbur  Tompkins,  we  met  for  the  first  time 
Frank  Norris,  another  California  novelist,  who  captivated 
us  both,  not  merely  because  of  his  handsome  face  and  figure, 
but  by  reason  of  his  keen  and  joyous  spirit. 

He  had  been  employed  for  some  time  in  the  office  of 
Doubleday  and  Page,  and  though  I  had  often  passed  him 


My    Father's    Inheritance 

at  his  desk,  I  had  never  before  spoken  with  him.  We  struck 
up  an  immediate  friendship  and  thereafter  often  dined  to 
gether.  He  told  me  of  his  plan  to  embody  modern  Cali 
fornia  in  a  series  of  novels,  and  at  my  request  read  some 
of  his  manuscript  to  me. 

Zulime,  although  she  greatly  admired  Norris,  still  main 
tained  that  Edward  MacDowell  was  the  handsomest  man 
of  her  circle,  and  in  this  I  supported  her,  for  he  was  then 
in  the  noble  prime  of  his  glorious  manhood,  gay  of  spirit, 
swift  of  wit  and  delightfully  humorous  of  speech.  As  a 
dinner  companion  he  was  unexcelled  and  my  wife  quite  lost 
her  heart  to  him.  Between  Frank  Norris  and  Edward  Mac 
Dowell  I  appeared  but  a  rusty-coat.  I  sang  small.  For 
tunately  for  me  they  were  both  not  only  loyal  friends  but 
devoted  husbands. 

I  remembered  saying  to  Zulime  as  we  came  away: 
"America  need  not  despair  of  her  art  so  long  as  she  has 
two  such  personalities  as  Edward  MacDowell  and  Frank 
Norris." 

Edwin  Booth's  daughter,  Mrs.  Grossman,  who  was  living 
at  this  time  in  a  handsome  apartment  on  Eighteenth  Street, 
was  one  of  those  who  liked  my  wife,  and  an  invitation  to 
take  tea  with  her  produced  in  me  a  singular  and  sudden  re 
versal  to  boyish  timidity,  for  to  me  she  had  almost  the  qual 
ity  of  royalty.  I  thought  of  her  as  she  had  looked  to  me, 
fifteen  years  before,  when  on  the  occasion  of  Edwin  Booth's 
last  performance  of  Macbeth  in  Boston,  she  sat  in  the  stage- 
box  with  her  handsome  young  husband,  and  applauded  her 
illustrious  father. 

"An  enormous  audience  was  present,"  I  explained  to 
Zulime,  "and  most  of  us  were  deeply  interested  in  the  radi 
ant  figure  of  that  happy  girl.  To  me  she  was  a  princess,  and 
I  observed  that  as  the  curtain  rose  after  each  act  and  the 
great  tragedian  came  forth  to  bow,  his  eyes  sought  his 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

daughter's  glowing  face.  Each  time  the  curtain  fell  his 
final  glance  was  upon  her.  Her  small  hands  seemed  the  only 
ones  whose  sound  had  value  in  his  ears." 

How  remote,  how  royal,  how  unattainable  she  had  ap 
peared  to  me  that  night!  Now  here  she  was  a  kindly, 
charming  hostess,  the  mother  of  a  family  who  regarded  me 
as  "a  distinguished  author."  To  make  that  radiant  girl 
in  the  stage  box  and  my  lovely  hostess  coalesce  was  diffi 
cult,  but  as  I  studied  her  profile  and  noted  the  line  of  her 
expressive  lips  I  was  able  to  relate  her  to  the  princely 
player  whose  genius  I  had  worshiped  from  the  gallery. 

It  will  be  evident  to  the  reader  that  life  in  New  York 
pleased  me  better  than  life  in  West  Salem  or  even  in  Chi 
cago,  and  I  would  gladly  have  stayed  on  till  spring,  but 
Zulime  decided  to  go  back  to  Chicago,  and  this  we  did 
about  the  first  of  February. 

The  last  of  the  many  notable  entertainments  in  which  my 
wife  shared  was  an  open  meeting  of  the  National  Institute 
of  Arts  and  Letters  (which  I  had  helped  to  found),  where 
she  met  many  of  the  leading  writers  and  artists  of  the  city. 
Howells,  who  presided  over  the  program,  was  especially  fine, 
restrained,  tactful  yet  quietly  authoritative,  and  when  I 
told  him  that  our  wedding  journey  was  nearly  over  he  ex 
pressed  a  regret  which  was  highly  flattering  to  us  both.  At 
one  o'clock  on  the  day  following  this  historic  meeting  we 
entered  a  car  headed  for  the  west,  acknowledging  with  a 
sigh,  yet  with  a  comfortable  sense  of  having  accomplished 
our  purpose,  that  it  would  be  profitable  to  go  into  retire 
ment  and  ruminate  for  a  month  or  two.  The  glories  of  New 
York  had  been  almost  too  exciting  for  Zulime,  "I  am  ready 
to  go  home,"  she  said. 

Home!  There  was  my  problem.  The  only  city  residence 
I  possessed  was  my  bachelor  apartment  on  Elm  Street,  and 
at  the  moment  I  had  no  intention  of  asking  my  wife  to  share 
its  narrow  space  except  as  a  temporary  lodging,  and  to  take 

166 


My    Father's     Inheritance 

her  back  into  that  snow-covered  little  Wisconsin  village, 
back  to  a  shabby  farm  house  filled  with  ailing  elderly  folk 
would  amount  to  crime.  From  the  high  splendor  of  our 
stay  in  New  York  we  now  fell  to  earth  with  a  thump.  My 
duties  as  a  son,  my  cares  as  the  head  of  a  household  re 
turned  upon  me,  and  my  essential  homelessness  took  away 
all  that  assurance  of  literary  success  which  my  Eastern 
friends  had  helped  me  attain.  Of  the  elation  in  which  I 
had  moved  while  in  New  York  I  retained  but  a  shred. 
Once  more  the  hard-working  fictionist  and  the  responsible 
head  of  a  family,  I  began  to  worry  about  the  future.  My 
honeymoon  was  over. 

The  basic  realities  of  my  poverty  again  cropped  out  in 
a  letter  from  my  mother  who  wrote  that  my  aunt  was  very 
ill  and  that  she  needed  me.  To  Zulime  I  said,  "You  stay 
here  with  your  sister  and  your  friends  while  I  go  up  to  the 
Homestead  and  see  what  I  can  do  for  our  old  people." 

This  she  refused  to  do.  "No,"  she  loyally  said,  "I  am 
going  with  you,"  and  although  I  knew  that  she  was  choosing 
a  dreary  alternative  I  was  too  weak,  too  selfishly  weak,  to 
prevent  her  self-sacrifice.  We  left  that  night  at  the  usual 
hour  and  arrived  in  time  to  eat  another  farmer's  breakfast 
with  father  and  mother  next  morning.  Aunt  Susan  was 
unable  to  meet  us. 

Her  sweet  spirit  was  about  to  leave  its  frail  body,  that 
was  evident  to  me  as  I  looked  down  at  her,  but  she  knew 
me  and  whispered,  "I'm  glad  to  have  you  at  home."  She 
showed  no  fear  of  death,  in  fact  she  appeared  unconscious 
of  her  grave  condition.  She  was  a  beautiful  character  and 
to  see  her  lying  there  beneath  her  old-fashioned  quilt,  so 
small  and  helpless,  so  patient,  lonely  and  sad,  made  speech 
difficult  for  me.  She  had  meant  much  in  my  life.  The 
serene  dignity  with  which  she  and  her  mother  had  carried 
the  best  New  England  traditions  into  the  rough  front  rank 
of  the  Border,  was  still  written  in  the  lines  of  her  face.  I 

167 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

had  never  seen  her  angry  or  bitter,  and  I  had  never  heard 
her  utter  an  unkind  word. 

Zulime  took  charge  of  the  work  about  the  house  with  a 
cheerfulness  which  amazed  me.  My  mother  with  pathetic 
confidence  leaned  upon  her  daughter's  strong  young  shoul 
ders  and  the  music  of  my  stern  old  father's  voice  as  he  said, 
"Well,  daughter,  I'm  glad  you're  here,"  was  a  revelation  to 
me.  He  already  loved  her  as  if  she  were  his  very  own,  and 
she  responded  to  his  affection  in  a  way  which  put  me  still 
more  deeply  in  her  debt.  It  would  have  been  disheartening, 
but  not  at  all  surprising,  had  she  found  the  village  and  my 
home  intolerable,  but  she  did  not — she  appeared  content, 
sustained  we  will  say,  by  her  sense  of  duty. 

Her  situation  was  difficult.  Imprisoned  in  the  snowy 
silences  of  the  little  valley,  dependent  on  her  neighbors  for 
entertainment,  and  confronted  with  the  care  of  two  in 
valids  and  a  fretful  husband,  she  was  put  to  a  rigid  test. 

Beside  our  base-burning  stove  she  sat  night  after  night 
playing  cinch  or  dominoes  to  amuse  my  father,  while  creak 
ing  footsteps  went  by  on  the  frosty  board-walks  and  in  a 
distant  room  my  aunt  lay  waiting  for  the  soft  step  of  the 
Grim  Intruder.  It  must  have  seemed  a  gray  outlook  for  my 
bride  but  she  never  by  word  or  look  displayed  uneasiness. 

Without  putting  our  conviction  into  words,  we  all  realized 
that  my  aunt's  departure  was  but  a  matter  of  a  few  days. 
"There  is  nothing  to  do,"  the  doctor  said.  "She  will  go  like 
a  person  falling  asleep.  All  you  can  do  is  wait —  And  so 
the  days  passed. 

We  went  to  bed  each  night  at  ten  and  quite  as  regularly 
rose  at  half-past  six.  Dinner  came  exactly  at  noon,  supper 
precisely  at  six.  Although  my  upstairs  study  was  a  kind 
of  retreat,  we  spent  less  time  in  it  than  we  had  planned  to  do, 
for  mother  was  so  appealingly  wistful  to  have  us  near  her 
that  neither  of  us  had  the  heart  to  deny  her.  She  could 
not  endure  to  have  us  both  absent.  Careful  not  to  inter- 

168 


My    Father's     Inheritance 

rupt  my  writing,  she  considered  Zulime's  case  in  different 
light.  "You  can  read,  or  sew  or  knit  down  here  just  as 
well  as  up  there,"  she  said.  "It  is  a  comfort  for  me  just 
to  have  you  sit  where  I  can  look  at  you." 

She  loved  to  hear  me  read  aloud,  and  this  I  often  did  in 
the  evening  while  she  sat  beside  Zulime  and  watched  her 
fingers  fly  about  her  sewing.  These  were  blissful  hours  for 
her,  and  in  these  after  years  I  take  a  measure  of  comfort  in 
remembering  the  part  I  had  in  making  them  possible. 

Slowly  but  steadily  Susan  Garland's  vital  forces  died  out, 
and  at  last  there  came  a  morning  when  her  breath  faltered 
on  her  lips.  She  had  gone  away,  as  she  had  lived,  with 
quiet  dignity.  Notwithstanding  her  almost  constant  suffer 
ing  she  had  always  been  a  calmly  cheerful  soul  and  her 
passing,  while  it  left  us  serious  did  not  sadden  us.  Her  life 
came  to  its  end  without  struggle  and  her  face  was  peaceful. 

She  was  the  last  of  my  father's  immediate  family,  and  to 
him  was  transmitted  in  due  course  of  law,  the  estate  with 
which  her  husband  had  left  her,  a  dower,  which  though 
small  had  enabled  her  to  live  independently  of  her  relatives 
and  in  simple  comfort.  It  was  a  matter  of  but  a  few  thou 
sand  dollars,  but  its  possession  now  made  the  most  funda 
mental  change  in  my  father's  way  of  life.  The  effect  of  this 
certain  income  upon  his  character  was  almost  magical.  He 
took  on  a  sense  of  security,  a  feeling  of  independence,  a 
freedom  from  worry  such  as  he  had  been  trying  for  over 
sixty  years,  without  success,  to  attain. 

It  released  him  from  the  tyranny  of  the  skies.  All  his 
life  he  had  been  menaced  by  the  "weather."  Clouds,  snows, 
winds,  had  been  his  unrelenting  antagonists.  Hardly  an 
hour  of  his  past  had  been  free  from  a  fear  of  disaster.  The 
glare  of  the  sun,  the  direction  of  the  wind,  the  assembling 
of  clouds  at  sunset, — all  the  minute  signs  of  change,  of 
storm,  of  destruction  had  been  his  incessant  minute  study. 
For  over  fifty  years  he  had  been  enslaved  to  the  seasons. 

169 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

His  sister's  blessing  liberated  him.  He  agonized  no  more 
about  the  fall  of  frost,  the  slash  of  hail,  the  threat  of  tem 
pest.  Neither  chinch  bugs  nor  drought  nor  army  worms 
could  break  his  rest.  He  slept  in  comfort  and  rose  in  con 
fidence.  He  retained  a  general  interest  in  crops,  of  course, 
but  he  no  longer  ate  his  bread  in  fear,  and  just  in  proportion 
as  he  realized  his  release  from  these  corroding,  long-en 
dured  cares,  did  he  take  on  mellowness  and  humor.  He  be 
came  another  man  altogether.  He  ceased  to  worry  and 
hurry.  His  tone,  his  manner  became  those  of  a  citizen  of 
substance,  of  genial  leisure.  He  began  to  speak  of  travel! 

Definitely  abandoning  all  intention  of  farming,  he  put  his 
Dakota  land  on  sale  and  bought  several  small  cottages  in 
West  Salem.  As  a  landlord  in  a  modest  way,  he  rejoiced  in 
the  fact  that  his  income  was  almost  entirely  free  from  the 
results  of  harvest.  It  irked  him  (when  he  thought  of  it)  to 
admit  that  all  his  pioneering  had  been  a  failure,  that  all  his 
early  rising,  and  his  ceaseless  labor  had  availed  so  little,  but 
the  respect  in  which  he  was  now  held  as  householder,  and 
as  President  of  the  village,  compensated  him  in  such  degree 
that  he  was  able  to  ignore  his  ill  success  as  a  wheat  raiser. 

"This  legacy  proves  once  again  the  magic  of  money,"  I 
remarked  to  Zulime.  "Father  can  now  grow  old  with  dig 
nity  and  confidence.  His  living  is  assured." 

It  remains  to  say  that  this  inheritance  also  lifted  in 
directly  a  part  of  my  own  burden.  It  took  from  me  some 
thing  of  the  financial  responsibility  concerning  the  house 
hold  whose  upkeep  I  had  shared  for  ten  years  or  more. 
Mother  was  still  my  care,  but  not  in  the  same  sense  as 
before,  for  my  father  with  vast  pride  volunteered  to  pay  all 
the  household  expenses.  He  even  insisted  upon  paying  for 
an  extra  maid  and  gardener.  Now  that  he  no  longer  needed 
the  cash  returns  from  the  garden,  he  began  to  express  a 
pleasure  in  it.  He  was  content  with  making  it  an  esthetic 
or  at  most  a  household  enterprise. 

170 


CHAPTER  TWELVE 
We    Tour    the    Oklahoma    Prairie 

ONE  of  the  disadvantages  of  being  a  fictionist  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  history  of  one's  imaginary  people 
halts  just  in  proportion  as  one's  mind  is  burdened  with  the 
sorrowful  realities  of  one's  own  life.  A  troubled  bank  clerk 
can  (I  believe)  cast  up  a  column  of  figures,  an  actor  can 
declaim  while  his  heart  is  breaking,  but  a  novelist  can't — 
or  at  any  rate  I  can't — write  stories  while  some  friend  or 
relative  is  in  pain  and  calling  for  relief.  Composition  is 
dependent  in  my  case  upon  a  delicately  adjusted  mood,  and 
a  very  small  pebble  is  sufficient  to  turn  the  currents  of  my 
mind  into  a  dry  channel. 

My  aunt's  death  was  a  sad  shock  to  my  mother  and  until 
she  regained  something  of  her  cheerful  temper,  I  was  unable 
to  take  up  and  continue  the  action  of  my  novel.  I  kept 
up  the  habit  of  going  to  my  study,  but  for  a  week  or  more  I 
could  not  write  anything  but  letters. 

By  the  tenth  of  March  we  were  all  longing  with  deepest 
hunger  for  the  coming  of  spring.  According  to  the  old 
almanac's  saying  we  had  a  right  to  expect  on  the  twenty- 
first  a  relenting  of  the  rigors  of  the  north,  but  it  did  not 
come.  "March  the  twenty-first  is  spring  and  little  birds 
begin  to  sing"  was  not  true  of  the  Valley  this  year.  For 
two  weeks  longer,  the  icy  winds  continued  to  sweep  with 
Arctic  severity  across  the  crests  of  the  hills,  and  clouds  of 
snow  almost  daily  sifted  down  through  the  bare  branches 
of  the  elms.  At  times  the  landscape,  mockingly  beautiful, 
was  white  and  bleak  as  January.  Drafts  filled  the  lanes  and 
sleigh-bells  jingled  mockingly. 

At  last  came  grateful  change.  The  wind  shifted  to  the 

171 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

South.  At  mid-day  the  eaves  began  to  drip,  and  the  hens, 
lifting  their  voices  in  jocund  song,  scratched  and  bur 
rowed,  careening  in  the  dusty  earth  which  appeared  on  the 
sunward  side  of  the  barn.  Green  grass  enlivened  the  banks 
of  the  garden,  and  on  the  southern  slopes  of  the  hills  warmly 
colored  patches  appeared,  and  then  came  bird-song  and 
budding  branches! — so  dramatic  are  the  changes  in  our 
northern  country. 

No  sooner  was  spring  really  at  hand  than  Zulime  and  I, 
eager  to  share  in  the  art  life  which  was  so  congenial  to  us 
both,  returned  to  my  former  lodging  in  Chicago;  and  a 
little  later  we  went  so  far  as  to  give  a  party — our  first 
party  since  our  marriage.  Fuller,  who  came  early  and 
stayed  late,  appeared  especially  amused  at  our  make-shifts. 
'This  isn't  Chicago,"  he  exclaimed  as  he  looked  around  our 
rooms.  "This  is  a  lodging  in  London!" 

It  was  at  this  party  that  I  heard  the  first  word  of  the 
criticism  under  which  I  had  expected  to  suffer.  One  of  our 
guests,  an  old  and  privileged  friend,  remarked  with  a  sigh, 
"Well,  now  that  Zuhl  has  married  a  writer,  I  suppose  her 
own  artistic  career  is  at  an  end." 

"Not  at  all!"  I  retorted,  somewhat  nettled.  "I  am  an 
individualist  in  this  as  in  other  things.  I  do  not  believe  in 
the  subordination  of  a  wife  to  her  husband.  Zulime  has 
all  the  rights  I  claim  for  myself — no  more,  no  less.  If  she 
fails  to  go  on  with  her  painting  or  sculpture  the  fault  will 
not  be  mine.  Our  partnership  is  an  equal  one." 

I  meant  this.  Although  dimly  aware  that  mutual  con 
cessions  must  be  made,  it  was  my  fixed  intention  to  allow 
my  wife  the  fullest  freedom  of  action.  Proud  of  her  skill 
as  an  artist,  I  went  so  far  as  to  insist  on  her  going  back 
into  her  brother's  studio  to  resume  her  modeling.  "You 
are  not  my  house-keeper — you  are  a  member  of  a  firm.  I 
prefer  to  have  you  an  artist." 

Smiling,  evasive,  she  replied,  "I  haven't  at  the  present 

172 


We     Tour     the     Oklahoma     Prairie 

moment  the  slightest  'call'  to  be  an  artist.    Perhaps  I  shall 
— after  a  while;  but  at  present  I'd  rather  keep  house." 

"But  consider  me!"  I  insisted.  "Here  am  I,  a  public 
advocate  of  the  rights  of  women,  already  denounced  as  your 
'tyrant  husband,'  'a  selfish  egotistic  brute!' — I'll  be  accused 
— I  am  already  accused — of  cutting  short  your  career  as  a 
sculptor.  Consider  the  injustice  you  are  doing  me/" 

She  refused  to  take  my  protest  or  her  friends'  comment 
seriously;  and  so  we  drifted  along  in  pleasant  round  of 
parties  till  the  suns  of  May,  brooding  over  the  land  lured 
us  back  to  the  Homestead,  in  which  Zulime  could  house-keep 
all  day  long  if  she  wished  to  do  so,  and  she  did! 

Full  of  plans  for  refurnishing  and  redecorating,  she  was 
busy  as  a  bumble-bee.  As  the  mistress  of  a  big  garden  and 
a  real  kitchen  she  invited  all  her  Chicago  friends  to  come 
and  share  her  good  fortune.  She  was  filled  with  the  spirit 
of  ownership  and  exulted  over  the  four-acre  patch  as  if  it 
were  a  noble  estate  in  Surrey. 

It  chanced  that  Lorado  on  his  way  to  St.  Paul  was  able 
to  stop  off,  and  Zulime  not  only  cooked  a  special  dinner  for 
him,  but  proudly  showed  him  all  about  the  garden,  talking 
gaily  of  the  number  of  jars  of  berries  and  glasses  of  jelly 
she  was  planning  to  put  up. 

"Well,  Zuhl,"  he  said  resignedly,  "I  suppose  it's  all  for 
the  best,  but  I  don't  quite  see  the  connection  between  your 
years  of  training  in  sculpture  and  the  business  of  canning 
fruit." 

It  was  a  perfect  spring  day,  and  the  Homestead  was  at 
its  best.  The  entire  demesne  was  without  a  weed,  and  the 
blooming  berry  patches,  the  sprouting  asparagus  beds  and 
the  budding  grape  vines  all  come  in  for  the  eminent  sculp 
tor's  enforced  inspection,  until  at  last  with  a  yawn  of  un 
concealed  boredom  he  turned  away.  "You  seem  to  like 
your  slavery,"  he  remarked  to  Zulime,  a  note  of  comical 
accusation  in  his  voice. 

173 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

On  the  station  platform  when  about  to  say  good-bye  to 
me,  he  became  quite  serious.  "This  marriage  appears  to 
be  working  out,"  he  admitted,  musingly.  "I  confess  I  was 
a  little  in  doubt  about  it  at  first,  but  Zuhl  seems  to  be 
satisfied  with  her  choice  and  so — well,  I've  decided  to  let 
matters  drift.  Whether  she  ever  comes  back  to  sculpture 
or  not  is  unimportant,  so  long  as  she  is  happy." 

Knowing  that  Zulime  had  always  been  his  intellectual 
comrade,  and  realizing  how  deeply  he  felt  the  separation 
which  her  growing  interest  in  my  affairs  had  brought  about, 
I  gave  him  my  hand  in  silent  renewal  of  a  friendship  into 
which  something  new  and  deeply  significant  had  come.  "I 
hope  she  will  never  regret  it,"  was  all  I  could  say. 

Zulime  was  not  deceived  as  to  my  income.  My  property, 
up  to  this  time,  consisted  of  a  small,  a  very  small  library, 
a  dozen  Navajo  rugs,  several  paintings,  a  share  in  four 
acres  of  land  and  my  book  rights  (which  were  of  negligible 
value  so  far  as  furnishing  a  living  was  concerned),  and  my 
wife  perceived  very  clearly  that  our  margin  above  neces 
sity  was  narrow,  but  this  did  not  disturb  her  faith  in  the 
future,  or  if  it  did,  she  gave  no  sign  of  it — her  face  was 
nearly  always  smiling.  Nevertheless  I  had  no  intention  of 
keeping  her  in  West  Salem  all  summer.  I  could  not  afford 
to  wear  out  her  interest  in  it. 

One  day,  shortly  after  Lorado's  visit,  I  received  a  letter 
from  Major  Stouch,  the  Indian  Agent  with  whom  I  had 
campaigned  at  Lamedeer  in  '97.  He  wrote:  "I  have  just 
been  detailed  to  take  charge  of  the  Cheyenne  Agency  at 
Darlington,  Oklahoma.  Mrs.  Stouch  and  I  are  about  to 
start  on  a  survey  of  my  new  reservation  and  I  should  like 
to  have  you  and  your  wife  ccme  down  and  accompany  us 
on  our  circuit.  We  shall  hold  a  number  of  councils  with 
the  Indians,  and  there  will  be  dances  and  pow-wows.  It 
will  all  be  material  for  your  pen." 

This  invitation  appealed  to  me  with  especial  force  for 


We    Tour    the     Oklahoma     Prairie 

I  had  long  desired  to  study  the  Southern  Cheyennes,  and  a 
tour  with  Stouch  promised  a  rich  harvest  of  fictional  themes, 
for  me.  Furthermore  it  offered  a  most  romantic  experience 
for  Zulime — just  the  kind  of  enlightenment  I  had  prom 
ised  her. 

With  no  time  to  lose,  we  packed  our  trunks  and  took 
train  for  Kansas  City  enroute  for  Indian  Territory,  the 
scene  of  many  of  the  most  exciting  romances  of  my  youth, 
the  stronghold  of  bank  robbers,  and  the  hiding  place  of 
military  renegades. 

On  our  way  to  Oklahoma,  we  visited  Professor  Taft 
in  Hanover  and  I  find  this  note  recorded:  "All  day  the 
wind  blew,  the  persistent,  mournful  crying  wind  of  the 
plain.  The  saddest,  the  most  appealing  sound  in  my  world. 
It  came  with  a  familiar  soft  rush,  a  crowding  presence,  utter 
ing  a  sighing  roar — a  vague  sound  out  of  which  voices  of 
lonely  children  and  forgotten  women  broke.  To  the  soli 
tary  farmer's  wife  such  a  wind  brings  tears  or  madness. 
I  am  tense  with  desire  to  escape.  This  bare  little  town 
on  the  ridge  is  appalling  to  me.  Think  of  living  here  with 
the  litany  of  this  wind  forever  in  one's  ears." 

By  contrast  West  Salem,  with  its  green,  embracing  hills, 
seemed  a  garden,  a  place  of  sweet  content,  a  summer  re 
sort,  and  yet  in  this  Kansas  town  Zulime  had  spent  part  of 
her  girlhood.  In  this  sun-smit  cottage  she  had  left  her 
mother  to  find  a  place  in  the  outside  world  just  as  I  had 
left  my  mother  in  Dakota.  From  this  town  she  had  gone 
almost  directly  to  Paris!  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine 
a  more  amazing  translation — and  yet,  now  that  she  was 
back  in  the  midst  of  it,  she  gave  no  sign  of  the  dishearten- 
ment  she  must  have  felt.  She  met  all  her  old  friends  and 
neighbors  with  unaffected  interest  and  gayety. 

Twenty-four  hours  later  we  were  in  the  midst  of  a  wide, 
sunny  prairie,  across  which,  in  white-topped  prairie  schoon 
ers,  settlers  were  moving  just  as  they  had  passed  our  door 

175 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

in  Iowa  thirty  years  before.  Plowmen  were  breaking  the 
sod  as  my  father  had  done  in  '71,  and  their  women  washing 
and  cooking  in  the  open  air,  offered  familiar  phases  of  the 
immemorial  American  drama, — only  the  stations  on  the  rail 
way  broke  the  spell  of  the  past  with  a  modern  word. 

Swarms  of  bearded,  slouchy,  broad-hatted  men  filled  the 
train  and  crowded  the  platforms  of  the  villages.  Cow-boys, 
Indians  in  white  men's  clothing,  negroes  (black  and  brown), 
and  tall,  blonde  Tennessee  mountaineers  made  up  this  amaz 
ing  population — a  population  in  which  libraries  were  of 
small  value,  a  tobacco-chewing,  ceaselessly  spitting  unkempt 
horde,  whose  stage  of  culture  was  almost  precisely  that 
which  Dickens  and  other  travelers  from  the  old  world  had 
found  in  the  Central  West  in  the  forties. 

How  these  scenes  affected  my  young  wife  I  will  not  un 
dertake  to  say;  but  I  remember  that  she  kept  pretty  close 
to  my  elbow  whenever  we  mingled  with  the  crowd,  and 
the  deeper  we  got  into  this  raw  world  the  more  uneasy  she 
became.  "Where  shall  we  spend  the  night?"  she  asked. 

Had  I  been  alone  I  would  not  have  worried  about  a  hotel, 
but  with  a  young  wife  who  knew  nothing  of  roughing  it,  I 
became  worried.  To  the  conductor  I  put  an  anxious  ques 
tion,  "Is  there  a  decent  hotel  in  Reno?" 

His  answer  was  a  bit  contemptuous,  "Sure,"  he  exclaimed. 
"What  do  you  think  you're  doing — exploring?" 

This  was  precisely  what  I  feared  we  were  doing.  I  said 
no  more  about  it,  although  I  hadn't  much  confidence  in 
his  notions  of  a  first  class  hotel.  There  was  nothing  for 
it  but  to  rest  upon  his  assurance  and  go  hopefully  forward 
to  the  end  of  the  line. 

It  must  have  been  about  ten  of  a  dark  warm  night  as 
we  came  to  a  final  halt  beside  a  low  station  marked  "Reno," 
and  at  the  suggestion  of  the  brakeman  I  called  for  "the 
Palace  Hotel  Bus,"  although  none  of  the  waiting  carriages 
or  drivers  seemed  even  remotely  related  to  a  palace.  My 


We     Tour     the     Oklahoma     Prairie 

wife,  filled  with  a  high  sense  of  our  adventure,  took  her 
seat  in  the  muddy  and  smelly  carriage,  with  touching  trust 
in  me. 

The  Palace  Hotel,  with  its  doorway  brightly  lighted  with 
electricity,  proved  a  pleasant  surprise.  It  looked  clean  and 
bright  and  new,  and  the  proprietor,  a  cheerful  and  self- 
respecting  citizen,  was  equally  reassuring.  We  went  to  our 
rooms  with  restored  confidence  in  Oklahoma. 

The  next  morning,  before  we  had  finished  our  breakfast, 
a  messenger  from  the  Agency  came  in  to  say  that  a  carryall 
was  at  the  door,  and  soon  we  were  on  our  way  toward  the 
Fort. 

The  roads  were  muddy,  but  the  plain  was  vividly,  bril 
liantly  green,  and  the  sky  radiantly  blue.  The  wind,  filled 
with  delicious  spring  odors,  came  out  of  the  west;  larks 
were  whistling  and  wild  ducks  were  in  flight.  To  my  wife 
it  was  as  strange  as  it  was  beautiful.  It  was  the  prairie  at 
its  best — like  the  Jim  River  in  1881. 

Fort  Reno  (a  cluster  of  frame  barracks),  occupied  a  low 
hill  which  overlooked  the  valley  of  the  Canadian,  on  whose 
green  meadows  piebald  cattle  were  scattered  like  bits  of 
topaz.  Flowers  starred  the  southern  slopes,  and  beside  the 
stream  near  the  willows  (in  which  mocking  birds  were  sing 
ing),  stood  clusters  of  the  conical  tents  of  the  Cheyennes, 
lodges  of  canvas  made  in  the  ancient  form.  Our  way  led 
to  the  Agency  through  one  of  these  villages,  and  as  we 
passed  we  saw  women  at  their  work,  and  children  in  their 
play,  all  happy  and  quite  indifferent  to  the  white  man  and 
his  comment. 

The  Stouchs  met  us  at  the  door  of  the  big  frame  cottage 
which  was  the  agent's  house,  and  while  Mrs.  Stouch  took 
charge  of  Zulime  the  Major  led  me  at  once  to  his  office,  in 
order  that  I  might  lose  no  time  in  getting  acquainted  with 
his  wards.  In  ten  minutes  I  found  myself  deep  in  another 
world,  a  world  of  captive,  aboriginal  warriors,  sorrowfully 

177 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

concerned  with  the  problem  of  "walking  the  white  man's 
trail." 

All  that  day  and  each  day  thereafter,  files  of  white-topped 
wagons  forded  the  river,  keeping  their  westward  march 
quite  in  the  traditional  American  fashion,  to  disappear  like 
weary  beetles  over  the  long,  low  ridge  past  the  fort  which 
stood  like  a  guidon  to  the  promised  land.  Here  were  all 
the  elements  of  Western  settlement,  the  Indians,  the  sol 
diers,  the  glorious  sweeping  wind  and  the  flowering  sod, 
and  in  addition  to  all  these  the  resolute  white  men  seeking 
their  fortunes  beneath  the  sunset  sky,  just  as  of  old,  re 
morselessly  carrying  their  women  and  children  into  hard 
ship  and  solitude.  Without  effort  I  was  able  to  imagine 
myself  back  in  the  day  of  Sam  Houston  and  Satanka. 

Our  trip  around  the  reservation  with  the  Agent  began  a 
few  days  later  with  an  exultant  drive  across  the  prairie  to 
the  South  Fork  of  the  Canadian  River.  It  was  glorious 
summer  here.  Mocking  birds  were  singing  in  each  swale, 
and  exquisite  flowers  starred  the  sod  beneath  our  wheels. 
Through  a  land  untouched  by  the  white  man's  plow,  we 
rode  on  a  trail  which  carried  me  back  to  my  childhood,  to 
the  Iowa  Prairie  over  which  I  had  ridden  with  my  parents 
thirty  years  before.  This  land,  this  sky,  this  mournful, 
sighing  wind  laid  hold  of  something  very  sweet,  almost 
sacred  in  my  brain.  By  great  good  fortune  I  had  suc 
ceeded  in  overtaking  the  vanishing  prairie. 

The  arrival  of  the  Agent  at  each  sub-agency  was  the 
signal  for  an  assembly  of  all  the  red  men  round-about  and 
Zulime  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  several  old  fashioned 
Councils  carried  on  quite  in  the  traditional  fashion,  the 
chiefs  in  full  native  costume,  their  head  dresses  presenting 
suggestions  of  the  war-like  past.  The  attitudes  of  the  men 
in  the  circle  were  at  all  times  serious  and  dignified,  and  the 
gestures  of  the  orators  instinct  with  natural  grace. 

One  of  the  Cheyenne  camps  in  which  we  lingered  was 


We    Tour     the     Oklahoma     Prairie 

especially  charming.  Set  amid  the  nodding  flowers  and 
waving  grasses  of  a  small  meadow  in  the  elbow  of  a  river, 
its  lodges  were  filled  with  happy  children,  and  under 
sun-shades  constructed  of  green  branches,  chattering  women 
were  at  work.  Paths  led  from  tent  to  tent,  and  in  the  deep 
shade  of  ancient  walnut  trees,  on  the  banks  of  the  stream, 
old  men  were  smoking  in  reminiscent  dream  of  other  days. 
As  night  fell  and  sunset  clouds  flamed  overhead,  prim 
roses  yearned  upward  from  the  sward,  and  the  teepees, 
lighted  from  within,  glowed  like  jewels,  pearl-white  cones 
with  hearts  of  flame.  Shouts  of  boys,  laughter  of  girls, 
and  the  murmur  of  mothers'  voices  suggested  the  care-free 
life  of  the  Algonquin  in  days  before  the  invading  con 
queror  enforced  new  conditions  and  created  new  desires. 

For  two  weeks  we  drove  amid  scenes  like  these,  scenes 
which  were  of  inspirational  value  to  me  and  of  constant 
delight  to  Zulime.  My  notebook  filled  itself  with  hints  for 
poems  and  outlines  for  stories.  In  all  my  tales  of  the 
Cheyennes,  I  kept  in  mind  Major  Powell's  significant  re 
mark,  "The  scalp  dance  no  more  represents  the  red  man's 
daily  life  than  the  bayonet-charge  represents  the  white  man's 
civilization.5'  Having  no  patience  with  the  writers  who  re 
garded  the  Indian  as  a  wild  beast,  I  based  my  interpretation 
on  the  experiences  of  men  like  Stouch  and  Seger  who,  by 
twenty  years'  experience,  had  proved  the  red  man's  fine 
qualities.  As  leading  actors  in  the  great  tragedy  of  West 
ern  settlement  I  resolved  to  present  the  Ogallallah  and  the 
Ute  as  I  saw  them. 

At  one  of  these  informal  councils  between  the  Agent  and 
some  of  the  Cheyenne  headmen,  I  caught  a  phrase  which 
gave  me  the  title  of  a  story  and  at  the  same  time  pointed  the 
moral  of  a  volume  of  short  stories.  White  Shield,  one  of  John 
Seger's  friends,  in  telling  of  his  experiences,  sadly  remarked, 
"I  find  it  hard  to  make  a  home  among  the  white  men." 

179 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

Instantly  my  mind  grasped  the  reverse  side  of  the  prob 
lem.  I  took  for  the  title  of  my  story  these  words:  White 
Eagle,  the  Red  Pioneer,  and  presented  the  point  of  view 
of  a  nomad  who  turns  his  back  on  the  wilderness  which 
he  loves,  and  sets  himself  the  task  of  leading  his  band  in 
settlement  among  the  plowmen.  In  a  collection  of  tales, 
some  of  which  have  not  been  published  even  in  magazines, 
I  have  grouped  studies  of  red  individuals  with  intent  to 
show  that  a  village  of  Cheyennes  has  many  kinds  of  people 
just  like  any  other  village.  "Hippy,  the  Dare  Devil," 
"White  Weasel,  the  Dandy,"  "Rising  Wolf,  the  Ghost 
Dancer,"  are  some  of  the  titles  in  this  volume.  Whether  it 
will  get  itself  printed  in  my  lifetime  or  not  is  a  problem, 
for  publishers  are  loath  to  issue  a  book  of  short  stories,  any 
kind  of  short  stories.  "Stories  about  Indians  are  no  longer 
in  demand,"  they  say.  Nevertheless,  some  day  I  hope  these 
stories  may  get  into  print  as  a  volume  complementary  to 
Main  Traveled  Roads,  and  They  of  the  High  Trails. 

Among  the  most  unforgettable  of  all  our  Oklahoma  ex 
periences  was  a  dinner  which  we  had  with  the  Jesuit  Mis 
sionary  priest  at  "Chickashay"  on  the  last  day  of  our  stay. 
It  had  been  raining  in  torrents  for  several  hours,  and  as 
the  Mission  was  four  miles  out  I  would  have  despaired  of 
getting  there  at  all  had  it  not  been  for  the  Agency  Clerk 
who  was  a  man  of  resource  and  used  to  Oklahoma  "show 
ers."  Commandeering  for  us  the  Agency  "hack,"  a  kind 
of  canvas-covered  delivery  wagon,  he  succeeded  in  reaching 
the  priest's  house  without  shipwreck,  although  the  road  was 
a  river. 

The  priest,  a  short,  jolly  Alsatian,  met  us  with  shining 
face  quite  unlike  any  other  missionary  I  had  ever  seen. 
He  was  at  once  a  delight  and  an  astonishment  to  Zulime. 
His  laugh  was  a  bugle  note  and  his  hospitality  a  glow  of 
good  will.  The  dinner  was  abundant  and  well  served,  the 

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We     Tour     the     Oklahoma     Prairie 

wine  excellent,  and  our  host's  talk  of  absorbing  interest. 

We  were  waited  upon  by  a  Sister  of  severe  mien,  who, 
between  courses,  stood  against  the  wall  with  folded  arms 
eyeing  us  with  disapproving  countenance.  It  was  plain 
that  she  was  serving  under  compulsion,  but  Father  Ambrose 
paying  no  attention  to  her  frowns,  urged  us  to  take  a  second 
helping,  telling  us  meanwhile  of  his  first  exploration  of 
Oklahoma,  a  story  which  filled  us  with  laughter  at  his 
"greenness."  Chuckling  with  delight  of  the  fool  he  was, 
he  could  not  conceal  the  heroic  part  he  had  played,  for  the 
hardships  in  those  days  were  very  real  to  a  young  man  just 
out  of  a  monastery.  "I  was  so  green  the  cows  would  have 
eaten  me,"  he  said. 

The  whole  incident  was  like  a  chapter  in  a  story  of  some 
other  land  than  ours.  The  Sisters,  the  little  brown  chil 
dren,  the  book-walled  sitting  room,  the  sturdy  little  priest 
recounting  his  struggles  with  a  strange  people  and  a  strange 
climate, — all  these  presented  a  charming  picture  of  the 
noble  side  of  missionary  life.  Nothing  broke  the  charm 
of  that  dinner  except  an  occasional  peal  of  thunder  which 
made  us  wonder  whether  we  would  be  able  to  navigate  the 
hack  back  to  the  hotel  or  not. 

What  a  waste  the  plain  presented  as  we  started  on  our 
return  at  ten  o'clock!  The  lightning,  almost  incessant, 
showed  from  time  to  time  what  appeared  to  be  a  vast  lake, 
shorelessly  extending  on  every  side  of  us,  a  shallow  sea 
through  which  the  horses  slopped,  waded  and  all  but  swam 
while  Carroll,  the  Clerk,  as  pilot,  did  his  best  to  reassure 
my  wife.  '"I  know  the  high  spots,"  he  said,  whereat  I  fer 
vently  (though  secretly)  replied,  "I  hope  you  do,"  and  when 
we  swung  to  anchor  in  front  of  our  little  hotel,  I  shook  his 
hand  in  congratulations  over  his  skill- — and  good  luck! 

On  our  return  to  Chicago  I  found  Lorado  in  his  studio, 
modeling  a  more  or  less  conventional  female  form,  and  my 

181 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

resentment  took  words.  "If  you  will  come  with  me,  down 
among  the  Cheyennes,  I  will  show  you  men  who  can  be 
nude  without  being  naked.  In  White  Eagle's  camp  you 
can  study  warriors  who  have  the  dignity  of  Roman  Sena 
tors  and  the  grace  of  Athenian  athletes." 

To  illustrate  one  of  my  points,  I  caught  up  a  piece  of 
gray  canvas  and  showed  him  how  the  chiefs  of  various 
tribes  managed  their  blankets.  Something  in  these  motions 
or  in  the  long  gray  lines  of  the  robe  which  I  used  fired  his 
imagination.  For  the  first  time  in  our  acquaintanceship,  I 
succeeded  in  interesting  him  in  the  Indian.  He  was  espe 
cially  excited  by  the  gesture  of  covering  the  mouth  to  ex 
press  awe,  and  a  few  days  later  he  showed  me  several  small 
figures  which  he  had  sketched,  suggestions  which  afterwards 
became  the  splendid  monuments  of  Silmee  and  Black- 
hawk.  He  never  lost  the  effect  of  the  noble  gestures  which 
I  had  reproduced  for  him.  The  nude  red  man  was  a  hack 
neyed  subject,  but  Brown  Bear  with  his  robe,  afforded  pre 
cisely  the  stimulus  of  which  he  stood  in  need. 

This  trip  to  Indian  Territory  turned  out  to  be  a  very 
important  event  in  my  life.  First  of  all  it  enabled  me  to 
complete  the  writing  of  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse 
Troop,  and  started  me  on  a  long  series  of  short  stories 
depicting  the  life  of  the  red  man.  It  gave  me  an  enormous 
amount  of  valuable  material  and  confirmed  me  in  my  con 
viction  that  the  Indian  needed  an  interpreter,  but  beyond 
all  these  literary  gains,  I  went  back  to  Wisconsin  filled  with 
a  fierce  desire  to  own  some  of  that  beautiful  prairie  over 
which  we  had  ridden. 

This  revived  hunger  for  land  generated  in  me  a  plan  for 
establishing  a  wide  ranch  down  there,  an  estate  to  which 
we  could  retire  in  February  and  March.  "We  can  meet 
the  spring  half-way,"  I  explained  to  my  father.  "I  want  a 
place  where  I  can  keep  saddle  horses  and  cattle.  You  must 

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We     Tour     the     Oklahoma     Prairie 

« 

go  with  me  and  see  it  sometime.    It  is  as  lovely  as  Mitchell 
County  was  in  1870." 

To  this  end  I  wrote  to  my  brother  in  Mexico.  "Leave 
the  rubber  business  and  come  to  Oklahoma.  I  am  going  to 
buy  a  ranch  there  and  need  you  as  superintendent." 


183 


CHAPTER  THIRTEEN 
Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

IT  was  full  summer  when  we  got  back  to  Wisconsin,  and 
The  Old  Homestead  was  at  its  best.  The  garden  was  red 
with  ripening  fruit,  the  trees  thick  with  shining  leaves,  and 
the  thrushes  and  catbirds  were  singing  in  quiet  joy.  In 
the  fields  the  growing  corn  was  showing  its  ordered  spears, 
and  the  wheat  was  beginning  to  wave  in  the  gentle  wind. 
No  land  could  be  more  hospitable,  more  abounding  or  more 
peaceful  than  our  valley. 

With  her  New  Daughter  again  beside  her  life  seemed 
very  complete  and  satisfying  to  my  mother,  and  I  was  quite 
at  ease  until  one  night,  as  she  and  I  were  sitting  alone  in 
the  dusk,  she  confided  to  me,  for  the  first  time,  her  con 
viction  that  she  had  but  a  short  time  to  live.  Her  tone, 
as  well  as  her  words,  shocked  me,  for  she  had  not  hitherto 
been  subject  to  dark  moods.  She  gave  no  reason  for  her 
belief,  but  that  she  was  suffering  from  some  serious  inner 
malady  was  evident, — I  feared  it  might  concern  the  action 
of  her  heart — and  I  was  greatly  disturbed  by  it. 

Of  course  I  made  light  of  her  premonition,  but  thereafter 
I  watched  her  with  minute  care,  and  called  on  the  doctor  at 
the  slightest  sign  of  change.  We  sang  to  her,  we  read  to 
her,  and  Zulime  spent  long  hours  reading  to  her  or  sitting 
beside  her.  She  was  entirely  happy  except  when,  at  inter 
vals,  her  mysterious  malady, — something  she  could  not  de 
scribe, — filled  her  eyes  with  terror. 

She  loved  to  sit  in  the  kitchen  and  watch  her  new  daugh- 

184 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

ter  presiding  over  its  activities,  and  submitted,  with  pathetic 
pride,  to  any  change  which  Zulime  proposed.  "I  am  per 
fectly  contented,"  she  said  to  me,  "except " 

"Except  what,  mother?" 

"The  grandchild.    I  want  to  see  my  grandchild." 

One  of  our  regular  excursions  for  several  years  had  been 
a  drive  (usually  on  Sunday)  over  the  ridge  to  Lewis  Val 
ley,  where  Frank  McClintock  still  lived.  Among  my  earliest 
memories  is  a  terror  of  this  road,  for  it  led  up  a  long, 
wooded  hill,  which  seemed  to  me,  as  a  child,  a  dangerous 
mountain  pass.  Many,  many  times  since  then  I  had  made 
the  climb,  sometimes  in  the  spring,  sometimes  in  mid 
summer,  but  now  my  plans  included  my  wife.  Mother  was 
eager  to  go.  "I  can  stand  the  ride  if  you  will  drive  and 
be  careful  going  down  hill,"  she  said  to  me — and  so,  al 
though  I  was  a  little  in  doubt  about  the  effect  upon  her 
heart,  I  hired  a  team,  and  early  of  a  clear  June  morning 
we  started  for  Mindoro. 

It  was  like  riding  back  into  the  hopeful,  happy  past,  for 
both  the  old  people.  Father  was  full  of  wistful  reminis 
cences  of  "the  early  days,"  but  mother,  who  sat  beside 
Zulime,  made  no  comment,  although  her  face  shone  with 
inward  joy  of  the  scene,  the  talk — until  we  came  to  the 
steep  descent  which  scared  her.  Clinging  to  her  seat  with 
pitiful  intensity  she  saw  nothing  but  dangerous  abysses  until 
we  reached  the  level  road  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  ridge. 

It  was  glorious  June,  and  in  this  I  now  rejoice,  for  it 
proved  to  be  the  last  time  that  we  made  the  crossing  of  the 
long  hill  together.  I  was  glad  to  have  her  visit  her  brother's 
home  once  more.  Change  was  coming  to  him  as  well  as  to 
her.  His  prodigious  muscles  and  his  boyish  gayety  were 
fading  away  together.  Though  still  delightfully  jolly  and 
hospitable,  his  temper  was  distinctly  less  buoyant.  He  still 
played  the  fiddle;  but  like  his  brother,  David,  he  found 
less  and  less  joy  in  it,  for  his  stiffened  fingers  refused  to  do 

185 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

his  bidding.  The  strings  which  once  sang  clear  and  sweet, 
failed  of  their  proper  pitch,  and  these  discords  irritated 
and  saddened  him. 

Aunt  Lorette,  his  handsome,  rosy-cheeked  wife,  was 
beginning  to  complain  smilingly,  of  being  lame  and  "no 
account,"  but  she  provided  a  beautiful  chicken  dinner, 
gayly  "visiting"  while  she  did  it,  with  mother  sitting  by 
to  watch  her  at  the  job  as  she  had  done  so  many  times 
before. 

Lorette,  like  all  the  rest  of  us,  felt  under  the  necessity  of 
putting  her  best  foot  forward  in  order  that  "Zuleema" 
should  not  be  disappointed  in  any  way,  and  to  Zulime 
she  was  like  a  character  in  a  novel;  indeed,  they  all  tried 
to  live  up  to  her  notion  of  them.  For  her,  father  told  his 
best  stories  of  bears  and  Indians,  for  her,  Uncle  Frank 
fiddled  his  liveliest  tunes,  and  for  her  Aunt  Lorette  recounted 
some  of  the  comedies  which  the  valley  had  from  time  to  time 
developed,  and  which  (as  she  explained)  "had  gone  into 
one  of  Hamlin's  books.  Of  course  he  fixed  'em  up  a  little," 
she  added,  "you  couldn't  expect  him  to  be  satisfied  with 'a 
yarn  just  as  I  told  it,  but  all  the  same  he  got  the  idea  of 
at  least  two  of  his  stories  from  me." 

Valiant  Aunt  Lorette!  Her  face  was  always  sunny,  no 
matter  how  deep  the  shadow  in  her  heart;  and  her  capacity 
for  work  was  prodigious.  She  was  an  almost  perfect  ex 
ample  of  the  happy,  hard-working  farmer's  wife,  for  her 
superb  physical  endowment  and  her  serene  temperament 
had  survived  the  strain  of  thirty  years  of  unremitting  toil. 
Her  life  had  been,  thus  far,  a  cheerful  pilgrimage.  She  did 
not  mind  the  loneliness  of  the  valley.  The  high  hill  which 
lay  Between  her  door  and  the  village  could  not  wall  her 
spirit  in.  She  rejoiced  in  the  stream  of  pure  water  which 
flowed  from  the  hillside  spring  to  the  tank  at  her  kitchen 
door,  and  she  took  pride  in  the  chickens  and  cows  and 
pigs  which  provided  her  table  with  abundant  food. 

186 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

"Oh,  yes,  I  like  to  go  to  town — once  in  a  while,"  she 
replied,  in  answer  to  Zulime's  question.  "But  I'd  hate  to 
live  there.  I  don't  see  how  people  get  along  on  a  tucked 
up  fifty-foot  lot  where  they  have  to  buy  every  blessed  thing 
they  eat." 

How  good  that  dinner  was!  Hot  biscuit,  chicken,  short 
cake,  coffee  and  the  most  delicious  butter  and  cream.  At 
the  moment  it  did  seem  a  most  satisfactory  way  to  live. 
We  forgot  that  the  dishes  had  to  be  washed  three  times 
each  day,  and  that  the  mud  and  rain  and  wind  and  snow 
often  shut  the  homestead  in  for  weeks  at  a  stretch.  Seeing 
the  valley  at  its  loveliest,  under  the  glamor  of  a  summer 
afternoon,  we  found  it  perfect. 

After  dinner  we  men-folks  (leaving  the  women,  in  the 
"good  old  way,"  to  clear  away  the  dinner  dishes)  went  out 
on  the  grass  under  the  trees,  and  as  I  talked  of  my  moun 
taineering  Uncle  Frank  said,  with  a  wistful  note  in  his 
voice,  "I've  always  wanted  to  go  out  into  that  country  with 
you.  Chasing  a  deer  through  a  Wisconsin  swamp  don't 
satisfy  me — I'd  like  to  get  into  the  grizzly  bear  country — 
but  now  I'm  too  old." 

Thereupon  father  stated  his  desires.  "There  are  just 
two  trips  I  want  to  make — I'd  like  to  go  by  a  steamboat 
from  Duluth  to  Detroit,  and  I  want  to  see  Yellowstone 
Park." 

"Well,  why  don't  you  do  it?"  demanded  my  Uncle.  "You 
can  afford  it  now." 

Father's  face  became  thoughtful.  "I  believe  I  will. 
Lottridge  and  Shane  are  planning  that  boat  trip.  I  could 
go  with  them." 

"Sail  ahead,"  said  I,  "and  if  you  get  back  in  time  I'll 
take  you  through  Yellowstone  Park.  Zulime  and  I  are 
going  to  Montana  in  July." 

Neither  of  them  had  the  slightest  desire  to  see  London 
or  Paris  or  Rome,  but  they  both  longed  for  a  fuller  knowl- 

187 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

edge  of  the  West.  They  were  still  pioneers,  still  explorers 
over  whose  imagination  the  trackless  waste  exercised  a 
deathless  dominion.  To  my  uncle  I  said,  "If  I  could  afford 
it,  I  would  take  you  with  me  on  one  of  my  trailing  expedi 
tions  and  show  you  some  real  wilderness." 

"I  wish  you  would,"  he  answered  quickly.  "I'd  tend 
horses,  cook,  or  anything  else  in  order  to  go  along." 

Of  course  this  wistful  longing  was  only  a  mood  on  his 
part,  for  he  was  naturally  of  a  cheerful  disposition,  but  music 
and  the  wilderness  always  stirred  him  to  his  deeps.  Ten 
minutes  later  he  was  joking  with  Zulime,  giving  a  fine  ex 
hibition  of  the  contented  husbandman. 

As  the  time  came  to  leave,  my  mother  glanced  about  her 
with  an  emotion  which  she  brokenly  expressed  when  she 
said,  "I  don't  suppose  I  shall  ever  get  over  here  again. 
You  must  come  and  see  me,  after  this." 

"Oh,  you'll  be  ccmin'  over  oftener  than  ever,  now  that 
you've  got  a  daughter  to  lean  on,"  retorted  Lorette  with 
easy  grace. 

On  our  way  home,  at  the  crest  of  the  hill,  I  drew  rein 
in  order  that  we  might  all  look  away  over  the  familiar 
valley,  stretching  mistily  toward  the  sun,  and  I,  too,  had 
the  feeling — which  I  was  careful  not  to  express  even  by  a 
look  or  tone — that  mother  and  I  would  never  again  ride  this 
road  or  look  out  upon  this  lovely  scene  together,  and  some 
thing  in  her  eyes  and  the  melancholy  sweetness  of  her  lips 
told  me  that  she  was  bidding  the  landscape  a  long  farewell. 

We  rode  the  remaining  portion  of  our  way  in  somber 
mood,  although  we  all  agreed  that  it  was  a  colorful  finish  of 
a  perfect  day — a  day  to  be  recalled  in  after  years  with  a 
tender  heart-ache. 

[It  is  all  changed  now.  Aunt  Lorette  has  gone  to  her 
reward.  Uncle  Frank,  old  and  lonely,  is  living  on  the  vil 
lage  side  of  the  ridge  and  strangers  are  in  the  old  house!] 

That  night,  Zulime  and  I  talked  over  the  agreement  I 

188 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

had  made  with  father,  and  we  planned  a  way  to  carry  it 
out.  Almost  as  excited  about  the  Yellowstone  as  he,  she 
was  quite  ready  to  camp  through  as  I  suggested.  "We 
will  hire  a  team  at  Livingston,  and  with  our  own  outfit,  will 
be  independent  of  stages  and  hotels — but  first  I  must  show 
you  some  Indians.  We  will  visit  Standing  Rock  and  see 
the  Sioux  in  their  'Big  Sunday.'  Father  can  meet  us  at 
Bismark  after  we  come  out." 

With  the  confidence  of  a  child  she  accepted  my  arrange 
ment  and  on  the  first  day  of  July  we  were  in  the  stage 
ambling  across  the  hot,  dry  prairie  which  lay  between  Bis 
mark  and  Fort  Yates.  Empty,  arid  and  illimitable  the 
rolling  treeless  landscape  oppressed  us  both,  and  yet  there 
was  a  stern  majesty  in  its  sweep,  and  the  racing  purple  shad 
ows  of  the  dazzling  clouds  lent  it  color  and  movement.  To 
me  it  was  all  familiar,  but  when,  after  an  all-day  ride,  we 
came  down  into  the  valley  of  the  Muddy  Missouri,  the 
sheen  of  its  oily  red  current  was  quite  as  grateful  to  me  as 
to  my  weary  wife. 

Our  only  means  of  reaching  the  Agency  was  a  small 
rowboat  which  seemed  a  frail  ferry  even  to  me.  How  it 
appeared  to  Zulime,  I  dared  not  ask — but  she  unhesitatingly 
stepped  in  and  took  her  seat  beside  me.  I  think  she  ac 
cepted  it  as  a  part  of  the  strange  and  hardy  world  in  which 
her  husband  was  at  home. 

We  were  both  silent  on  that  crossing,  for  our  slender 
craft  struggled  anxiously  with  the  boiling,  silent,  turbid 
current,  and  when  we  landed,  the  tense  look  on  Zulime's 
face  gave  place  to  a  smile. — Half  an  hour  later  we  were 
sitting  at  supper  in  a  fly-specked  boarding  house,  sur 
rounded  by  squaw-men  and  half-breed  Sioux,  who  were  en 
joying  the  luxury  of  a  white  man's  table  as  a  part  of  their 
Fourth  of  July  celebration.  My  artist  wife  was  being  edu 
cated  swiftly! 

The  tribe  was  again  encamped  in  a  wide  circle  just 

189 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

west  of  the  Fort,  precisely  as  when  my  brother  and  I  had 
visited  it  three  years  before,  while  the  store  and  the  Agency 
swarmed  with  native  men  and  women,  many  in  mixed  cos 
tume  of  cloth  and  skin.  Zulime's  artistic  joy  in  them 
filled  me  with  complacent  satisfaction.  I  had  the  air  of 
a  showman  rejoicing  in  his  exhibition  hall.  With  keen 
interest  we  watched  the  young  warriors  as  they  came  whirl 
ing  in  on  their  swift  ponies,  each  in  his  gayest  garments, 
the  tail  of  L.s  horse  decorated  with  rosettes  and  ribbons. 
Possessing  the  swiftness  and  the  grace  of  Centaurs,  coming 
and  going  like  sudden  whirlwinds,  they  were  superb  em 
bodiments  of  a  race  which  was  passing.  Some  of  the 
older  men  remembered  me,  and  greeted  me  as  one  friendly 
to  their  cause — but  for  the  most  part  the  younger  folk  eyed 
us  with  indifference. 

That  night  a  singular  and  savage  change  in  the  weather 
took  place.  The  wind  shifted  to  the  southeast  and  took 
on  the  heat  of  a  furnace.  By  ten  o'clock  next  morning 
dirt  was  blowing  in  clouds  and  to  walk  the  street 
was  an  ordeal.  All  day  Zulime  remained  in  her  room  vir 
tually  a  prisoner.  Night  fell  with  the  blast  still  roaring, 
and  the  dust  rising  from  the  river  banks  like  smoke,  pre 
sented  a  strange  and  sinister  picture  of  wrath.  It  was  as 
though  the  water,  itself,  had  taken  fire  from  the  lightning 
which  plunged  in  branching  streams  across  the  sky.  Thun 
der  muttered  incessantly  all  through  that  singular  and 
solemn  night,  a  night  which  somehow  foreshadowed  the 
doom  which  was  about  to  overtake  the  Sioux. 

The  following  day,  however,  was  clear  and  cool,  and  we 
spent  most  of  it  in  walking  about  the  camp,  visiting  the 
teepees  of  which  there  were  several  hundreds  set  in  a  huge 
ellipse,  all  furnished  in  primitive  fashion — some  of  them 
very  neatly.  Over  four  thousand  Sioux  were  said  to  be  in 
this  circle,  and  their  coming  and  going,  their  camp  fires 
and  feasting  groups  composed  a  scene  well  worth  the  long 

190 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

journey  we  had  endured.  Strange  as  this  life  seemed  to 
my  wife  it  was  quite  familiar  to  me.  To  me  these  people 
were  not  savages,  they  were  folks — and  in  their  festivity 
I  perceived  something  cf  the  spirit  of  a  county  fair  in 
Wisconsin. 

Our  guide  about  the  camp,  the  half-breed  son  of  a  St. 
Louis  trader,  was  a  big,  fine-featured,  intelligent  man  of 
about  my  own  age,  whose  pleasant  lips,  and  deep  brown 
eyes  attracted  me.  He  knew  everybody,  both  white  and 
red,  and  as  soon  as  he  understood  my  wish  to  write  fairly 
of  his  people,  he  gave  himself  unreservedly  to  our  serv 
ice.  Taking  us  from  lodge  to  lodge,  he  introduced  us  to 
the  men  whose  characters  were  of  the  most  value  in  my 
study  and  told  them  of  my  wish  to  report  them  with  sym 
pathy  and  truth. 

One  of  the  games  that  day  was  a  rough,  outdoor  drama, 
in  which  mimic  war  parties  sallied  forth,  scouts  were  cap 
tured  and  captives  rescued  in  stirring  pantomime. 

As  I  stood  watching  the  play  I  observed  that  one  man 
(no  longer  young)  was  serving  as  "the  enemy,"  alternately 
captured  or  slain.  His  role  was  not  only  arduous — it  was 
dangerous — dangerous  and  thankless,  and  as  I  saw  him 
cheerfully  volunteering  to  be  "killed"  I  handed  Primeau  a 
dollar  and  said:  "Give  this  to  that  old  fellow,  and  tell 
him  he  should  have  many  dollars  for  his  hard,  rough  work." 

Primeau  gave  him  the  coin,  but  before  he  had  time  to 
know  who  gave  it,  he  was  called  back  into  the  field. 

At  the  Agency  store  I  met  a  French-Canadian  named  Car- 
ignan  who  was  a  most  valuable  witness,  for  he  had  been 
among  the  red  men  for  many  years,  first  as  a  school  teacher 
and  later  as  trader.  From  him  I  secured  much  intimate  his 
tory  of  the  Sioux.  He  had  known  the  Sitting  Bull  well, 
and  gave  me  a  very  kindly  account  of  him.  "I  taught  the 
school  in  Rock  Creek  near  the  Sitting  Bull's  camp,  and  he 
was  often  at  my  table,"  he  explained.  "I  saw  no  harm  in 

191 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

him.     I  liked  him  and  respected  him.    He  was  an  Indian 
but  he  was  a  thinker." 

Vaguely  holding  in  my  brain  a  tale  in  which  the  Sitting 
Bull  should  be  protagonist,  I  talked  with  many  who  had 
known  him,  and  a  few  days  later  I  accepted  Primeau's  in 
vitation  to  visit  the  valley  in  which  the  chief  had  lived, 
and  which  was  the  scene  of  the  Ghost  Dance,  and  the  place 
of  the  chief's  death. 

I  suggested  to  Zulime  that  she  would  be  more  comfortable 
at  the  Agency  but  she  replied,  "I'd  rather  go  with  you.  I 
don't  like  being  left  here  alone." 

"You'll  find  the  ride  tiresome  and  the  lodging  rough,  I 
fear." 

"I  don't  care,"  she  retorted  firmly,  "I'm  going  with  you." 

Primeau  was  a  very  intelligent  man  and  a  good  talker, 
and  as  we  rode  along  he  gave  us  in  detail  the  history  of  the 
rise  of  the  Ghost  Dance,  so  far  as  the  Sioux  were  con 
cerned.  "There  was  nothing  war-like  about  it,"  he  in 
sisted.  "It  was  a  religious  appeal.  It  was  a  prayer  to  the 
Great  Spirit  to  take  pity  on  the  red  man  and  bring  back 
the  world  of  the  buffalo.  They  carried  no  weapons,  in 
fact  they  carried  nothing  which  the  white  man  had  brought 
to  them.  They  even  took  the  metal  fringes  off  their  shirts. 
They  believed  that  if  they  gave  up  all  signs  of  the  whites 
the  Great  Spirit  would  turn  his  face  upon  them  again." 

"Did  Sitting  Bull  take  part  in  this?"  I  asked. 

"He  encouraged  the  meeting  at  his  camp  and  gave  his 
cattle  to  feed  the  people,  but  he  was  never  able  to  dream 
like  the  rest.  He  never  really  believed  in  it.  He  wanted  to 
but  he  couldn't.  He  was  too  deep  a  thinker.  He  often 
talked  with  me  about  it." 

At  a  point  about  twenty  miles  from  The  Fort,  Primeau 
left  us  to  visit  a  ranchman  with  whom  he  had  some  business 
and  left  us  to  drive  on  with  a  guide  to  his  cattle-ranch 
where  we  were  to  stay  all  night. 

192 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

The  ranch  house  turned  out  to  be  a  rude  low  shack,  and 
here  Zulime  had  her  first  touch  of  genuine  cowboy  life. 
The  foreman  had  not  been  expecting  ladies  for  supper  and 
the  food  he  had  prepared  was  of  the  usual  camp  sort.  He 
explained  that  he  and  his  men  had  finished  their  meal,  and 
then,  leading  the  way  to  the  kitchen,  showed  us  the  food 
and  said  heartily,  "Help  yourself." 

On  the  back  of  the  stove  was  a  pot  half  filled  with  a 
mixture  of  boiled  rice  and  prunes.  In  the  oven  was  some 
soggy  bread,  and  on  the  hearth  some  cold  bacon.  A  can 
half  filled  with  pale  brown  coffee  added  the  finishing  touch 
to  a  layout  perfectly  familiar  to  me.  I  thanked  the  cook 
and  proceeded  to  dish  out  some  of  the  rice  whose  grayish 
color  aroused  Zulime's  distrust.  She  refused  to  even  taste 
it.  "It  looks  as  if  it  were  filled  with  dirt — or  ashes." 

"That's  its  natural  complexion,"  I  explained.  "This  is 
the  unpolished  kind  of  rice.  It  is  much  more  nutritious 
than  the  other  kind." 

She  could  not  eat  any  of  the  bread,  and  when  she  tried 
the  coffee  she  was  utterly  discouraged.  Nevertheless  her 
kindliness  of  heart  led  her  to  conceal  her  disgust.  She 
emptied  her  rice  into  the  stove  and  threw  her  cup  of  coffee 
from  the  window  in  order  that  the  cook  might  think  that 
she  had  eaten  her  share  of  the  supper. 

The  foreman  who  came  in  a  few  minutes  later  to  see 
that  we  were  getting  fed  politely  inquired,  "Is  there  any 
thing  else  I  can  get  you,  miss?" 

She  really  needed  something  to  eat  and  yet  she  was  puz 
zled  to  know  what  to  ask  for.  At  last,  in  the  belief  that  she 
was  asking  for  the  simplest  possible  thing,  she  smiled  sweetly 
and  said,  "I  should  like  a  glass  of  milk." 

The  foreman  permitted  no  expression  of  surprise  or  dis 
pleasure  to  cross  his  face,  he  merely  turned  to  a  tall  young 
man  in  the  doorway  and  quietly  remarked,  "Mell,  the  lady 
would  like  some  milk." 

193 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

A  glint  of  amusement  was  in  the  eyes  of  Mell,  but  he 
made  no  reply,  just  quietly  "sifted  out,"  and  a  few  mo 
ments  later,  while  the  foreman  was  in  the  midst  of  a  story, 
a  most  appalling  tumult  broke  upon  our  ears.  Calves 
bawled,  bulls  bellowed,  galloping  hooves  thundered,  men 
shouted  and  laughed — in  a  most  amazing  uproar. 

Rushing  to  the  door  in  search  of  the  cause  of  this  clamor, 
I  found  it  to  be  related  to  my  wife's  innocent  request. 

Tied  near  the  cabin  was  a  leaping,  blatting,  badly  fright 
ened  calf  while  inside  the  corral,  a  cow  evidently  its  dam, 
was  charging  up  and  down  the  fence,  her  eyes  literally 
blazing  with  fury,  pursued  by  Mell  on  a  swift  pony,  a  rope 
swinging  in  his  hand.  On  the  top  rails  of  the  enclosure 
a  row  of  delighted  loafers  laughed  and  cheered  and  shouted 
good  advice  to  the  roper. 

"What  is  he  doing?"  asked  my  amazed  wife,  as  Mell 
brought  the  cow  to  earth  in  a  cloud  of  dust. 

"Milking  the  cow,"  replied  the  boss  with  calmly  hospit 
able  inflection.  "If  you'll  be  patient  jest  a  few  min 
utes " 

The  insane  animal,  strong  as  a  lioness,  in  some  way 
freed  herself  from  the  rope  and  charged  her  enemy — M ell's 
pony  fled.  "O,  don't  let  him  hurt  her,"  pleaded  Zulime. 
"I  don't  want  any  milk.  I  didn't  know  you  had  to  do  that." 

"It's  the  only  way  to  milk  a  range  cow,"  I  explained. 

"Don't  worry,  Miss,"  the  foreman  added  reassuringly. 
"It's  all  in  the  day's  work  for  Mell." 

Again  the  cow  went  to  earth  and  Zulime,  horrified  at 
the  sight,  begged  them  to  restore  the  calf  to  its  dam.  At 
last  this  was  done,  and  a  grateful  peace  settled  over  the 
scene. 

The  cowboys  were  highly  delighted  and  I  was  amused,  but 
Zulime  was  too  shocked  to  see  any  humor  in  Mell's  defeat. 
"Do  they  really  milk  their  cows  in  that  way?"  she  asked 
me. 

194 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

"Yes,  when  they  milk  them  at  all,"  I  replied,  inwardly 
filled  with  laughter.  "As  a  matter  of  fact  they  get  all  their 
cream  out  of  cans.  Milking  that  cow  was  a  new  departure 
for  Mell,  I  think  he  was  a  little  disappointed  at  not  being 
allowed  to  go  through  with  it." 

"I'm  glad  he  didn't.  I'll  never  mention  milk  again — • 
in  this  country." 

We  slept  in  the  bed  of  our  wagon-box  that  night  while 
the  crew  rode  away  to  fight  a  prairie  fire.  We  heard  them 
come  quietly  in  toward  dawn,  and  when  we  awoke  and 
looked  out  of  our  cover  we  saw  them  lying  all  about  us 
on  the  ground  each  rolled  up  in  his  tarpaulin  like  a  boulder. 
Altogether  it  was  a  stirring  glimpse  of  ranch  life  for  my 
city-bred  wife. 

Primeau's  home  ranch  and  store  which  we  reached  about 
eleven  the  next  forenoon  was  an  almost  equally  sorry  place 
for  a  delicate  woman,  a  sad  spot  in  which  to  spend  even  a 
single  night.  Flies  swarmed  in  the  kitchen  like  bees,  and 
the  air  of  our  bedroom  was  hot  and  stagnant,  and  mos 
quitoes  made  sleep  impossible.  Zulime  became  ill,  and  I 
bitterly  regretted  my  action  in  bringing  her  into  this  God 
forsaken  land.  "We  shall  return  at  once  to  the  fort,"  I 
promised  her. 

It  was  an  iron  soil.  The  valley  was  a  furnace,  the  sky  a 
brazen  shield.  No  green  thing  was  in  sight,  and  the  curl 
ing  leaves  of  the  dying  corn  brought  back  to  me  those  deso 
late  days  in  Dakota  when  my  mother  tried  so  hard  to 
maintain  a  garden.  Deeply  pitying  the  captive  red  hun 
ters,  who  were  expected  to  become  farmers  under  these 
desolate  conditions,  I  was  able  to  understand  how  they  had 
turned  to  the  Great  Spirit  in  a  last  despairing  plea  for 
pity  and  relief.  "Think  of  this  place  in  winter,"  I  said 
to  Zulime. 

One  of  the  men  whom  Primeau  especially  wished  me  to 
meet  was  Slohan,  the  annalist  of  his  tribe,  one  of  the  "Si- 

195 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

lent  Eaters,"  a  kind  of  bodyguard  to  Sitting  Bull.  "He 
lives  only  a  few  miles  up  the  valley,"  Primeau  explained, 
and  so  to  find  him  we  set  off  in  a  light  wagon  next  morning 
drawn  by  a  couple  of  fleet  ponies. 

As  we  rode,  Primeau  told  me  more  of  "The  Silent  Eaters." 
"They  were  a  small  band  of  young  warriors  organized  for 
defense  and  council,  and  were  closely  associated  with  Sit 
ting  Bull  all  his  life.  Slohan,  the  man  we  are  to  see  to-day, 
is  one  of  those  who  stood  nearest  the  chief.  No  man  living 
knows  more  about  him.  He  can  tell  you  just  what  you 
want  to  know." 

An  hour  later  as  we  were  riding  along  close  to  the  bank 
of  the  creek,  Primeau  stopped  his  team.  "There  he  is  now! " 
he  exclaimed. 

Looking  where  he  pointed  I  discovered  on  a  mound  above 
the  stream  an  old  man  sitting  motionless  as  a  statue,  with 
bowed  head,  and  lax  hands.  There  was  something  strange, 
almost  tragic  in  his  attitude,  and  this  impression  deepened 
as  we  approached  him. 

He  was  wrinkled  with  age  and  clad  in  ragged  white  man's 
clothing,  but  his  profile  was  fine,  fine  as  that  of  a  Roman 
Senator,  and  the  lines  of  his  face  were  infinitely  sad.  In 
one  fallen  hand  lay  a  coiled  rope. 

He  did  not  look  up  as  we  drew  near,  did  not  appear  to 
hear  Primeau's  respectful  greeting.  Dejected,  motionless, 
he  endured  the  hot  sunshine  like  an  Oriental  Yoghi  or  a 
man  deadened  by  some  narcotic  drug. 

Gently,  almost  timidly,  Primeau  addressed  him.  "Slohan, 
this  white  man  has  come  a  long  way  to  see  you.  He  wishes 
to  talk  with  you  about  the  Sitting  Bull  and  of  the  days  of 
the  buffalo." 

At  last  the  old  man  turned  and  lifted  his  bloodshot  eyes 
and  uttered  in  a  husky  whisper,  a  few  words  which  changed 
Primeau's  whole  expression.  He  drew  back.  "Come  away! " 
he  said  to  me. 

196 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

While  we  were  walking  toward  our  team  he  explained. 
"Slohan  is  mourning  the  death  of  his  little  grandson.  Long 
time  he  has  been  there  wailing.  His  voice  is  gone.  He  can 
cry  no  more.  His  heart  is  empty.  He  will  not  talk  with  us." 

What  a  revelation  of  the  soul  of  a  red  warrior!  Hope 
less,  tragic,  inconsolable,  he  was  the  type  of  all  paternity 
throughout  the  world. 

Primeau  went  on,  "I  told  him  of  you  and  I  think  his  mind 
is  turned  to  other  things.  I  asked  him  to  come  to  see  you 
this  afternoon.  Perhaps  he  will.  Perhaps  I  have  lifted  his 
mind  from  his  sorrow." 

All  the  way  down  the  valley  I  pondered  on  the  picture 
that  grandsire  had  made  there  in  the  midst  of  that  deso 
late  valley. 

Primeau  told  me  of  his  grandson.  "He  was  a  handsome 
little  fellow.  I  can't  blame  the  old  man  for  weeping  over 
his  loss." 

Slohan  was  a  redoubtable  warrior.  He  had  been  the 
leader  of  Sitting  Bull's  bodyguard,  he  was  accounted  a 
savage,  and  yet  for  forty-eight  hours  he  had  been  sitting 
ceaselessly  mournirg  for  a  child,  crying  till  his  voice  was 
only  a  husky  whisper.  Nothing  that  I  had  ever  seen  typed 
the  bitterness  of  barbaric  grief  more  powerfully  than  this 
bent  and  voiceless  old  man. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  the  mourner  came  in  view,  riding 
on  a  pony,  without  a  saddle,  his  face  still  very  sad,  but 
not  entirely  despairing.  His  mind,  in  working  backward 
to  the  splendid  world  of  the  past,  the  world  in  which  his 
chief  had  played  such  heroic  and  stirring  parts,  his  heart 
had  been  comforted — or  at  any  rate  lightened. 

Although  clothed  in  the  customary  rags  of  the  mourner, 
his  hair  was  neatly  brushed  and  braided,  and  he  met  my 
wife  with  gentle  grace.  There  was  something  tragic  in  his  dim 
glance,  something  admirable  in  his  low  words  of  greeting. 

197 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

We  gave  him  food  and  drink,  and  then  while  we  all  sat 
on  the  earth  in  the  scant  shade  thrown  by  Primeairs  build 
ing,  he  began  to  talk,  slowly,  hesitantly  of  the  part  his 
chief  had  taken  in  the  wars  against  the  white  man.  He 
had  the  dignity  and  the  eloquence  of  a  fine  New  England 
judge.  A  notable  sweetness  and  a  lofty  poetry  were  blended 
in  his  expression;  and  as  he  used  the  sign  language  in  em 
phasizing  his  words  (gestures  finely  expressive  and  nobly 
rhythmical)  he  became,  to  my  perception,  the  native  bard 
reciting  the  story  of  his  clan.  I  was  able  to  follow  the 
broad  lines  of  his  discourse  and  when  at  the  close  of  the 
afternoon  he  rose  to  go,  I  said  to  him,  "I  shall  tell  of  the 
Sitting  Bull  as  you  have  spoken,"  and  we  parted  in  the 
glow  of  mutual  esteem. 

Zulime  was  feeling  much  better,  and  the  air  being  cooler, 
I  asked  permission  to  stay  another  day,  in  order  that  I 
might  meet  Looking  Stag,  another  of  the  warriors  who  had 
known  the  Sitting  Bull. 

Looking  Stag's  home  was  a  few  miles  down  the  valley, 
and  we  found  him  in  his  commodious  lodge,  entertaining  a 
couple  of  headmen  from  Cheyenne  River.  He  was  seated 
on  a  low  bed  opposite  the  door,  and  his  guests  were  placed 
on  either  hand  of  him.  He  glanced  up  at  us,  spoke  a  curt 
word  to  Primeau  and  went  on  with  his  story.  His  cold 
greeting,  and  the  evident  preoccupation  of  his  manner  made 
me  feel  like  an  intruder,  which  I  was,  and  this  feeling  was 
deepened  when  I  perceived  that  my  guide  was  distinctly  ill 
at  ease.  After  all,  he  was  only  a  half-breed  trader,  while 
these  men  were  red  chieftains. 

The  Looking  Stag  was  not  contemptuous  of  me — he  was 
merely  indifferent.  Busied  with  honored  guests  he  re 
garded  the  coming  of  a  strange  white  man  to  his  lodge  as 
something  of  a  nuisance.  He  went  on  cutting  tobacco,  and 
afterward  ground  it  between  his  palms  whilst  his  visitors 
talked  on  quite  oblivious  to  me. 

198 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

Our  host  looked  familiar,  but  as  he  was  painted  and 
wore  a  bonnet  of  eagle  feathers  I  could  not  remember 
where  I  had  seen  him. 

At  last,  in  a  pause  of  the  talk,  Primeau  said  something 
to  him  which  caused  him  to  break  into  a  smile  and  thrust 
his  open  hand  toward  me.  "How!  How!  my  friend," 
he  called  heartily. 

Then  I  recognized  him.  He  was  the  man  who  had  so 
unweariedly  taken  the  part  of  "The  Enemy"  in  the  games 
at  Standing  Rock.  Primeau  had  told  him  that  I  was  the 
man  who  had  given  him  the  money,  and  he  now  accepted 
me  as  a  friend. 

He  then  told  his  visitors  the  story  of  my  gift  and  message. 
They  also  laughed  and  shook  hands  with  me.  Thereafter 
we  were  all  on  terms  of  high  respect  and  mutual  confidence. 
I  put  my  questions  freely  and  they  replied  with  an  air  of 
candor. 

As  they  approached  the  Custer  fight,  however,  they 
paused,  pondered,  checked  up  one  another's  statements,  and 
at  last  produced  what  I  believed  to  be  the  truth  regarding 
the  share  in  that  battle — and  the  truth  is  incredible.  They 
recreated  the  whole  scene  for  me  as  Two  Moons  had  done. 
They  corroborated  all  that  I  had  obtained  from  the  northern 
Cheyennes. 

I  forgot  the  plow  and  the  reaper  while  sitting  there  in 
conference  with  those  men  for  they  were  thinkers  as  well 
as  warriors.  Within  the  walls  of  that  lodge  they  were  not 
despised  outcasts,  they  were  leaders,  councillors,  men  of 
weight.  They  had  reentered  a  world  which  caused  their 
faces  to  shine  just  as  my  father's  face  shone  when  he  told 
of  Grant  at  Vicksburg  or  recounted  the  days  of  his  youth 
on  The  Old  Wisconse.  For  a  little  while  I  inhabited  their 
world,  and  when  I  left  them  I  carried  with  me  a  deepened 
sense  of  their  essential  manliness. 

Alas!  Zulime  was  less  enthusiastic.  The  flies,  the  heat, 

199 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

the  dust,  the  bad  food — so  commonplace  to  me— were  hor 
rifying  to  her,  and  so  for  her  sake  I  cut  short  my  historical 
studies  and  hurried  her  back  to  the  Fort,  back  to  the  whole 
some  fare  of  the  officers7  mess.  With  no  consuming  literary 
interest  to  sustain  her  she  found  even  the  Agency  a  weari 
ness;  and  as  the  date  for  meeting  my  father  was  near,  we 
took  the  stage  back  to  Bismark,  she  with  a  sense  of  relief, 
I  with  a  feeling  of  regret  that  I  had  not  been  able  to  push 
my  investigations  deeper.  There  was  a  big  theme  here,  but 
I  had  small  faith  in  my  ability  to  handle  it.  It  required  an 
epic  'poet,  rather  than  a  realistic  novelist. 

Father,  excited  as  a  boy,  came  along  on  the  train  which 
reached  Bismark  the  morning  following  our  arrival  and  we 
at  once  took  him  into  the  Pullman  car  and  forced  him  to 
share  some  of  the  comforts  of  travel.  We  ate  breakfast 
in  the  dining  car  at  what  seemed  to  him  a  wildly  extrava 
gant  price  but  I  insisted  on  his  being  a  guest.  "Just  sit 
here  and  look  out  of  the  window  and  think  of  the  Erie  Canal 
Boats  in  which  you  came  west,  or  remember  your  ox-team 
in  fifty-eight." 

"All  right,"  he  said  with  a  quizzical  smile.  "If  you  can 
stand  the  expense,  I  can."  A  little  later  he  said,  "What 
a  change  my  life  has  witnessed.  I  helped  to  grade  the  first 
railway  in  the  State  of  Maine,  and  now  here  I  am  whirling 
along  through  'the  Great  American  Desert'  eating  a  steak 
and  drinking  my  coffee  in  a  flying  hotel.  I  wish  your 
mother  could  be  here  with  us." 

This  was  the  only  shadow  at  our  feast  and  we  put  it 
aside,  taking  comfort  in  the  thought  that  she  was  happy  in 
a  tree-embowered  home,  surrounded  by  the  abundance  of 
a  prolific  garden.  "Her  days  of  travel  are  over,"  I  said, 
and  turned  to  the  task  of  making  my  father's  outing  a 
shining  success. 

For  ten  days  we  camped  with  him  in  Yellowstone  Park, 
moving  from  place  to  place,  in  our  own  wagon  and  tent, 

200 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

and  when  we  came  out  and  he  started  on  his  homeward 
way,  he  expressed  complete  satisfaction.  "It  has  been  up 
to  the  bills,"  he  conceded,  and  I  could  see  that  he  was 
eager  to  get  back  to  Johnson's  drug  store,  where  he  could 
discuss  with  Stevens  and  McEldowney  the  action  of  gey 
sers  and  the  habits  of  grizzly  bears,  on  terms  of  equal  in 
formation. 

If  he  was  satisfied,  I  was  not.  Insisting  on  showing 
Zulime  the  Cascade  Range  and  the  Pacific  Ocean,  I  kept 
on  to  the  West.  Together  we  viewed  Tacoma  and  Seattle, 
and  from  the  boat  on  Puget  Sound  discovered  the  Olympic 
Mountains  springing  superbly  from  the  sea.  For  us  Rainier 
disclosed  his  dome  above  the  clouds,  and  Lake  McDonald 
offered  its  most  gorgeous  sunset. 

One  of  the  points  which  I  had  found  of  most  interest  in 
'97  was  the  Blackfoot  Agency,  and  as  we  sat  in  our  tent  on 
the  Northern  shore  of  Lake  McDonald  I  gained  Zulime's 
consent  to  go  in  there  for  a  few  days.  "The  train  lands 
us  there  late  at  night,"  I  said,  "and  there  is  no  hotel  at 
the  station  or  the  Agency,  but  we  can  set  up  our  tent  in  a 
few  moments  and  be  comfortable  till  morning." 

To  this  she  agreed — or  perhaps  I  should  say  to  this  she 
submitted,  and  at  eleven  o'clock  the  following  night  we 
found  ourselves  unloaded  on  the  platform  of  a  lonely  little 
station  on  the  plain.  It  was  a  starlit  night,  fortunately, 
and  dragging  our  tent  and  bedding  out  on  the  crisp,  dry  sod, 
we  set  to  work.  In  ten  minutes  we  had  a  house  and  bed 
in  which  we  slept  comfortably  till  a  freight  train  thun 
dered  by  along  about  dawn.  Truly  my  artist  wife  was  being 
schooled  in  the  tactics  of  the  trail! 

At  the  Agency  we  hired  a  wagon  and  drove  to  the  St. 
Mary's  Lake.  With  a  Piegan  (old  Four  Horns)  for  a 
guide  we  camped  on  the  lower  Lake,  and  Zulime  caught 
two  enormous  pike.  At  Upper  St.  Mary's,  we  set  our  tent 
just  below  the  dike.  A  "Chalet"  on  this  spot  now  wel- 

201 


A    Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

comes  the  tourist,  but  in  those  days  St.  Mary's  was  a  lone, 
and  stormful  mountain  water  with  not  even  a  forest  ranger's 
cabin  to  offer  shelter.  We  lived  in  our  own  tent  and 
cooked  our  own  food — a  glorious  experience  to  me,  but  to 
Zulime  (as  I  learned  afterward)  the  trip  was  not  an  un 
mixed  delight. 

We  visited  several  other  Indian  reservations  on  our  way 
home,  and  all  along  the  way  my  mind  was  busy  with  the 
splendid  literary  problems  here  suggested.  Deep  down 
in  my  brain  a  plan  was  forming  to  picture  these  conditions. 
"First  I  must  put  together  a  volume  of  short  stories  to 
be  called  The  Red  Pioneer;  then  I  shall  complete  a  prose 
poem  of  the  Sitting  Bull  to  be  called  The  Silent  Eaters,  and 
third,  and  most  important  of  all,  I  must  do  a  novel  of 
reservation  life,  with  an  army  officer  as  the  agent." 

In  these  volumes  I  planned  to  put  the  results  of  all  my 
studies  of  the  Northwest  during  my  many  explorations  of 
the  wild.  In  this  way  I  would  be  doing  my  part  in  de 
lineating  the  swiftly  changing  conditions  of  the  red  man  and 
the  mountaineer. 

Everywhere  I  went  I  studied  soldiers,  agents,  mission 
aries,  traders  and  squaw-men  with  insatiable  interest.  My 
mind  was  like  a  sponge,  absorbing  not  facts,  but  impres 
sions,  pictures  which  were  necessary  to  make  my  stories 
seem  like  the  truth.  While  in  camp  and  on  the  train,  I 
took  notes  busily  and  actually  formulated  several  tales  while 
riding  my  horse  along  the  trail. 

Perfectly  happy  in  this  work,  I  believed  my  wife  to  be 
equally  content,  for  she  bravely  declared  that  to  tumble 
off  a  pullman  in  the  middle  of  a  moonless  night,  and  help 
me  set  up  a  tent  on  the  prairie  grass  was  fun.  She  pre 
tended  to  enjoy  cooking  our  food  at  a  smoking  camp  fire 
in  a  drizzle  of  rain;  but  I  now  know  that  she  was  longing 
for  the  comforts,  the  conveniences,  the  repose  of  West 
Salem. 

202 


Standing    Rock    and    Lake    McDonald 

"Oh,  but  it  is  good  to  be  home,"  she  said  as  we  reached 
the  old  house,  and  I  too  was  ready  for  its  freedom  from 
care  and  its  opportunity  for  work,  happy  in  the  belief  that 
I  had  bestowed  on  my  wife  some  part  of  the  store  of 
heroic  and  splendid  experiences,  which  made  up  so  large 
a  section  of  my  own  life,  experiences  which  were  to  serve 
as  the  basis  for  all  my  future  work. 

The  flame  of  my  ambition  burned  brightly  at  the  close 
of  these  weeks  of  inspirational  exploration.  "With  noth 
ing  to  distract  or  weaken  me  I  ought  now,  at  least  to  justify 
the  faith  which  Howells  and  other  of  my  literary  friends 
and  advisers  had  been  kind  enough  to  declare."  Seizing 
my  pen  with  new  resolution  I  bent  to  the  task  of  putting 
into  fiction  certain  phases  of  the  great  Northwest  which  (up 
to  this  year)  had  not  been  successfully  portrayed. 


203 


CHAPTER  FOURTEEN 
The    Empty    Room 

MY  father  was  a  loyal  G.  A.  R.  man.  To  him,  naturally, 
the  literature,  the  ceremonies  and  the  comradeship 
of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  were  of  heroic  signifi 
cance  for,  notwithstanding  all  other  events  of  his  stirring 
life,  his  two  years  as  a  soldier  remained  his  most  moving, 
most  poetic  experience.  On  all  special  occasions  he  wore 
the  regulation  blue  coat  with  the  bronze  button  of  the 
Legion  in  its  lapel,  and  faithfully  attended  all  the  local 
meetings  of  his  "Post,"  but  he  had  not  been  able  to  take 
part  in  the  National  Conventions  for  the  double  reason 
that  they  were  always  too  far  away  from  his  Dakota  home 
and  invariably  came  at  the  time  when  his  presence  was 
most  needed  on  the  farm.  With  a  feeling  of  mingled  envy 
and  sadness  he  had  seen  his  comrades,  year  after  year,  ju 
bilantly  set  out  for  Washington  or  Boston  or  San  Fran 
cisco  whilst  he  remained  at  work. 

Now  the  case  was  different.  He  had  the  money,  he  had 
the  leisure  and  the  Grand  Review  was  about  to  take  place 
in  Chicago.  "Hamlin,"  said  he,  on  the  morning  after  my 
return  from  Montana,  "I  want  you  to  go  with  me  to  the 
G.  A.  R.  meeting  in  Chicago." 

Although  I  did  not  say  so,  I  was  sadly  averse  to  making 
this  trip.  Aching  to  write,  impatient  to  get  my  new  con 
ceptions  down  on  paper,  I  could  hardly  restrain  an  expres 
sion  of  reluctance,  but  I  did,  for  the  old  soldier,  more  afraid 
of  towns  than  of  mountains,  needed  me  in  the  city. 

204 


The    Empty    Room 

"All  right,  father,"  I  said,  and  put  my  notes  away. 

He  made  a  handsome  figure  in  his  new  suit,  and  his  broad- 
rimmed  hat  with  its  gold  cord.  He  was  as  excited  as  a  boy 
when  we  set  out  for  the  station  and  commented  with  a 
tone  of  satisfaction  on  the  number  of  his  comrades  to  be 
seen  on  the  train.  He  was  not  in  need  of  me  during  this 
part  of  his  excursion  for  he  hailed  every  old  soldier  as  "Com 
rade"  and  made  a  dozen  new  friendships  before  we  reached 
Madison.  No  one  resented  his  fraternal  interest.  Occa 
sionally  he  brought  one  of  his  acquaintances  over  to  my 
seat,  explaining  with  perfectly  obvious  pride  that  I  had 
written  a  history  of  General  Grant  and  that  I  lived  in  Chi 
cago.  "I'm  taking  him  along  to  be  my  scout,"  he  declared, 
at  the  close  of  each  introduction. 

At  my  lodgings  on  Elm  Street  he  made  himself  so  be 
loved  that  I  feared  for  his  digestion.  The  landlady  and  the 
cook  were  determined  that  he  should  eat  hot  biscuit  and 
jam  and  pie  in  addition  to  roast  chicken  and  gravy,  and  I 
was  obliged  to  insist  on  his  going  to  bed  early  in  order  to 
be  up  and  in  good  condition  for  the  parade  next  day. 

"I've  no  desire  to  march  in  the  ranks,"  he  said.  "I'm 
perfectly  content  to  sit  on  the  fence  and  see  the  columns 
pass." 

"You  needn't  sit  on  the  fence,"  I  replied.  "I've  got  two 
of  the  best  seats  in  the  Grand  Stand.  You  can  rest  there 
in  comfort  all  through  the  parade." 

He  didn't  know  how  much  I  paid  for  our  chairs,  but  a 
knowledge  that  he  was  in  the  seats  of  the  extravagant 
pleased  him  while  it  troubled  him.  He  was  never  quite  at 
ease  while  enjoying  luxury.  It  didn't  seem  natural,  some 
way,  for  him  to  be  wholly  comfortable. 

We  were  in  our  places  hours  before  the  start  (he  was 
like  a  boy  on  Circus  Day — afraid  of  missing  something), 
but  that  he  was  enjoying  in  high  degree  his  comfortable 
outlook,  made  me  almost  equally  content. 

205 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

At  last  with  blare  of  bugle  and  throb  of  drum,  that  grand 
and  melancholy  procession  of  time-scarred  veterans  came 
to  view,  and  their  tattered  flags  and  faded  guidons  brought 
quick  tears  to  my  father's  eyes.  Few  of  them  stepped  out 
with  a  swing,  many  of  them  limped  pitifully — all  were 
white-haired — an  army  on  its  downward  slope,  marching 
toward  its  final,  silent  bivouac. 

None  of  them  were  gay  and  yet  each  took  a  poignant 
pleasure  in  sharing  the  rhythm  of  the  column,  and  my 
father  voiced  this  emotion  when  he  murmured,  "I  ought 
to  be  down  there  with  my  company." 

To  touch  elbows  just  once  more,  to  be  a  part  of  the  file 
would  have  been  at  once  profoundly  sad  and  sadly  sweet, 
and  he  wiped  the  tears  from  his  cheeks  in  a  silence  which 
was  more  expressive  than  any  words  could  have  been. 

To  me  each  passing  phalanx  was  composed  of  piteous  old 

men — to  my  sire  they  were  fragments  of  a  colossal  dream — 

\   an  epic  of  song  and  steel.    "In  ten  years  he  and  they  will 

i  all  be  at  rest  in  'fame's  eternal  camping  ground,'  "  I  thought 

•  with  a  benumbing  realization  of  the  swift,  inexorable  rush 

of  time — a  tragedy  which  no  fluttering  of  bright  flags,  no 

flare  of  brave  bugles  could  lighten  or  conceal.    It  was  not 

an  army  in  review,  it  was  an  epoch  passing  to  its  grave. 

After  the  parade  was  over,  as  we  were  going  home  in  the 
car,  tired,  silent  and  sad,  I  perceived  my  father  as  others 
saw  him,  a  white-haired  veteran  whose  days  of  marching,  of 
exploration  were  over.  His  powerful  figure,  so  resilient 
and  so  brave  was  stooping  to  its  end.  His  restless  feet  were 
weary. 

However,  this  was  only  a  mood  with  him.  A  night's 
sleep  brought  back  his  courage,  and  his  energy  to  a  most 
amazing  degree,  and  I  was  again  called  upon  to  show  him 
the  "sights"  of  the  city — that  is  to  say,  we  once  more 
viewed  the  Stock  Yards,  the  Masonic  Temple  and  Lincoln 

206 


The    Empty    Room 

Park.  He  also  asked  me  to  go  with  him  for  a  sail  across 
the  Lake,  but  at  this  point  I  rebelled.  "I  am  willing  to 
climb  tall  buildings  or  visit  the  Zoo,  but  I  draw  the  line  at 
a  trip  to  Muskegon." 

With  guilty  conscience  I  watched  him  start  off  for  ths 
dock  alone,  but  this  sentiment  on  my  part  was  wasted.  A 
score  of  "comrades"  on  the  boat  more  than  made  up  for  my 
absence,  and  at  sunset  he  returned  beaming,  triumphant, 
perfectly  satisfied  with  his  day's  sail.  "Now,  I'm  ready  to 
go  home/'  he  announced. 

After  putting  him  on  the  train  next  day  I  opened  my 
desk  in  my  quiet  room  on  Elm  Street,  with  a  feeling  of  being 
half-in  and  half-out  of  the  state  of  matrimony.  In  some 
ways  I  liked  being  alone.  A  greater  power  of  concentra 
tion  resulted.  With  no  disturbing  household  influences,  no 
distracting  interests,  I  wrote  all  the  morning,  but  at  night, 
when  my  work  was  done,  my  mind  went  out  toward  my 
young  wife.  To  have  her  moving  about  the  room  would 
have  been  pleasant.  To  walk  with  her  to  the  studio  would 
have  been  a  joy.  As  a  novelist,  I  bitterly  resented  all  the 
minute  domestic  worries,  but  as  a  human  being  I  rejoiced 
in  my  new  relationship.  "Can  I  combine  the  two  activities? 
Will  being  a  husband  and  a  householder  cramp  and  defeat 
me  as  a  novelist?" 

These  questions  every  writer  who  is  ambitious  to  excel, 
must  answer  for  himself.  So  far  as  I  was  concerned,  the 
decision  had  been  made.  Having  elected  myself  into  the 
ranks  of  those  who  were  carrying  forward  the  immemorial 
traditions  of  the  race,  there  was  no  turning  back  for  me. 
I  ended  the  week  by  going  out  to  Eagle's  Nest  Camp, 
where  Zulime  met  me  to  renew  the  delight  of  our  days  of 
courtship. 

Even  here,  I  did  not  neglect  my  task.  Wallace  Heckman 
gave  me  a  desk  in  the  attic  and  there  each  morning  I  ham 
mered  away,  eager  to  get  my  material  "roughed  out"  while 

207 


A    Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

it  was  hot  in  my  memory.  I  often  wrote  four  thousand 
words  between  breakfast  and  luncheon.  One  story  took 
shape  as  a  brief  prose  epic  of  the  Sioux,  a  special  pleading 
from  the  standpoint  of  a  young  educated  red  man,  to  whom 
Sitting  Bull  was  a  kind  of  Themistocles.  Though  based 
on  accurate  information,  I  intended  it  to  be  not  so  much 
a  history  as  an  interpretation.  It  interested  me  at  the 
time  and  so — I  wasted  a  week! 

Life  at  camp  was  very  pleasant,  but  as  my  brother  wrote 
me  that  he  must  return  to  New  York  I  felt  it  my  duty  to 
go  home  and  see  that  my  mother  "attended"  the  County 
Fair,  which  was  a  most  important  event  to  her.  "Mother's 
life  retains  so  few  interests,"  I  explained  to  Zulime,  "that 
to  miss  the  Fair  would  be  to  her  a  great  deprivation.  You 
can  stay  here  but  I  must  go  home  and  take  her  down  to 
the  old  settlers'  picnic  in  Floral  Hall." 

Zulime  understood.  Loyally  cutting  short  her  pleasant 
companionship  with  her  fellow  artists  she  returned  with  me 
to  West  Salem  a  few  days  before  the  fair  opened. 

Fuller,  who  timed  his  visit  to  be  with  us  during  the  ex 
hibition,  professed  a  keen  interest  in  every  department  of  it. 
His  attitude  was  comically  that  of  a  serious-minded  Euro 
pean  tourist.  He  not  only  purchased  a  catalogue,  he  treated 
it  precisely  as  if  it  were  the  hand-book  of  the  Autumn 
Salon  in  Paris.  Carrying  it  in  his  hand,  he  spent  busy  hours 
minutely  studying  "Spatter  Work/'  and  carefully  inspecting 
decorated  bedspreads.  He  tasted  the  prize  bread,  sampled 
the  honey,  and  twirled  the  contesting  apples.  Nothing  es 
caped  his  notice.  He  was  as  alert,  and  (apparently)  as 
vitally  concerned  as  any  of  the  "judges,"  but  I,  knowing 
his  highly-critical  mind,  could  only  smile  at  his  reports. 

He  was  a  constant  joy,  not  only  to  Zulime  and  to  me, 
but  to  our  friends,  the  Eastons.  One  day  as  we  were  dig 
ging  potatoes  he  gave  me  a  lecture  on  my  duty  as  a  Wis 
consin  novelist.  "You  should  do  for  this  country  what 

208 


The    Empty    Room 

Thomas  Hardy  has  done  for  Wessex,"  he  said.  "You  have 
made  a  good  start  in  Main  Traveled  Roads,  and  Rose  of 
Dutcher's  Coolly,  but  you  should  do  more  with  it.  It  is  a 
noble  background." 

"Why  not  do  something  with  it  yourself?"  I  retorted. 

"You  are  almost  as  much  a  part  of  Wisconsin  as  I  am. 
I've  done  my  part  and  moved  on.  My  keenest  interests  now 
are  in  the  Mountain  West — a  larger  field.  There's  no  use 
saying  'Make  more  of  this  material ! '  I  can  only  do  what  I 
feel.  Just  now  I  am  full  of  Montana.  Why  don't  you 
celebrate  Eagle's  Nest?  If  you  weren't  so  myopic  you'd 
perceive  in  that  little  artist  colony  something  quite  as  liter 
ary  as  the  life  which  Hawthorne  lived  at  Brook  Farm." 

"I'm  no  Hawthorne,"  he  replied.  "I'm  not  even  Mar 
garet  Fuller.  I  don't  want  to  write  about  Camp — in  fact 
I  don't  want  to  write  about  anything.  I'd  rather  drive 
nails  or  superintend  a  tinner." 

In  this  way  our  discussion  usually  ended — with  each  of 
us  going  his  own  gait.  In  this  instance  his  way  led  back 
to  Chicago.  "I  must  return  to  my  plumbing,"  he  pro 
tested.  "I've  got  some  renters  who  are  complaining  of  their 
furnaces,"  and  that  was  the  end  of  his  visit.  We  knew 
better  than  to  argue  for  delay.  He  was  as  inflexible  as 
New  England  granite. 

His  going  left  a  gap.  We  both  liked  to  have  him  about. 
Never  in  the  way,  never  interfering  with  my  work,  he  was 
always  a  stimulant.  His  judgment  (second  only  to  Howells' 
in  my  estimation)  kept  me  to  my  highest  level.  He  was  the 
only  man  with  whom  I  could  discuss  all  my  perplexities 
and  be  enlightened. 

As  October  came  on  my  mother's  condition  called  for 
increasing  care.  She  could  not  walk  across  the  road  and 
her  outings  were  all  taken  in  a  wheeled  chair,  which  I 
pushed  about  the  village  each  afternoon.  She  was  very 
happy  when  we  were  at  home,  but  as  she  could  neither  sew 

209 


A    Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

nor  read  she  was  piteously  dependent  upon  the  members  of 
her  household  for  diversion.  Life's  walls  were  narrowing 
for  her,  that  was  sorrowfully  evident  to  me;  and  yet  I  did 
not — I  would  not  consider  the  possibility  of  her  early 
passing.  I  thought  of  her  as  living  on  for  many  years  longer. 
It  was  her  growing  inability  to  employ  her  time  which 
troubled  me  and  I  gave  the  most  of  my  afternoons  to  her 
amusement. 

As  my  father  wrote  from  Dakota  early  in  October  set 
ting  November  ist  as  the  date  for  his  return,  I  began  to 
plan  another  trip  to  New  York,  feeling  that  it  was  better  to 
go  in  the  early  autumn  than  to  wait  till  winter.  "Winters 
are  very  hard  on  old  folks  in  our  valley,"  I  remarked  to 
Zulime.  To  mother  I  said,  "Our  absence  will  not  be  long. 
We'll  be  back  in  time  for  Thanksgiving,"  I  assured  her. 

She  dreaded  our  going.  Clinging  to  us  both  as  though 
she  feared  we  might  never  return  she  pleadingly  said,  "Wait 
till  your  father  comes,"  and  her  distress  of  mind  caused 
me  to  put  off  our  departure  until  father  could  arrive. 

These  moods  of  depression,  these  periods  of  suffering 
which  she  could  not  explain,  were  usually  transitory,  and 
this  one  soon  passed.  In  a  day  or  two  she  was  free  from 
pain,  and  quite  cheerful.  "You  may  go,"  she  said  at  last, 
but  warningly  added,  "Don't  stay  away  too  lojig!" 

In  spite  of  her  smiling  face,  I  kissed  her  good-by  with 
a  sense  of  uneasiness,  almost  of  guilt.  "It  seems  a  selfish 
act  to  leave  her  at  this  time,"  I  confessed  to  Zulime,  "and 
yet  if  we  are  to  get  away  at  all,  it  is  safer  to  go  now." 

In  order  to  save  time  for  our  eastern  trip,  we  went 
through  Chicago  almost  without  stopping,  and  upon  reach 
ing  New  York,  took  the  same  suite  of  rooms  on  Fifteenth 
Street  in  which  we  had  lived  the  previous  year.  In  an 
hour  we  were  settled. 

My  brother,  who  was  playing  an  engagement  in  the  city, 
came  at  once  to  inquire  about  the  old  folks  and  I  gave  a 

210 


The    Empty    Room 

good  report.  "Mother  has  her  ups  and  downs,"  I  ex 
plained,  "but  she  is  very  comfortable  in  her  new  rooms. 
Of  course  she  misses  her  sons  and  her  new  daughter — I  am 
not  sure,  but  she  misses  the  new  daughter  more  than  she 
misses  you  and  me,  but  we  shall  soon  return  to  her." 

The  Eaglets  Heart,  which  had  been  running  with  favor 
as  a  serial,  was  just  being  published  in  book  form,  and  we 
were  in  high  hopes  of  it. 

At  the  same  time  the  Century  Company  was  preparing 
to  issue  Her  Mountain  Lover,  which  had  already  been 
printed  in  the  magazine.  Altogether  my  presence  in  New 
York  seemed  opportune,  if  not  actually  necessary,  a  fact 
which  I  made  much  of  in  writing  to  the  old  folks  in  the 
West. 

Gilder,  who  met  me  on  the  street  soon  after  our  arrival  in 
New  York,  spoke  to  me  in  praise  of  Her  Mountain  Lover. 
"I  predict  a  great  success  for  it.  It  has  beauty—  "  here 
he  smiled.  "I  am  always  preaching  'beauty'  to  you,  but 
you  need  it!  You  should  remember  that  the  writing  which 
is  beautiful  is  the  writing  which  lasts." 

He  was  looking  thin  and  bent  and  gray,  and  I  experi 
enced  a  keen  pang  of  fear.  "Gilder  is  growing  old,"  I 
thought,  and  this  feeling  of  change  was  deepened  a  few 
days  later  by  the  death  of  Charles  Dudley  Warner. 

"The  older  literary  men,  the  writers  who  have  been  my 
guides  and  my  exemplars,  are  dropping  away!  I  am  no 
longer  'a  young  and  promising  novelist.'  It  is  time  I  de 
livered  my  message — if  I  have  any,"  I  reminded  myself, 
with  a  realization  that  I  was  now  in  the  mid-ranks,  pushed 
on  by  younger  and  more  vigorous  authors.  Frank  Norris 
and  Stewart  Edward  WTiite  were  crowding  close  upon  my 
lagging  heels.  With  this  in  my  thought  I  got  out  my  manu 
script  and  set  to  work. 

I  would  have  been  entirely  happy  in  the  midst  of  many 
delightful  meetings  with  my  fellow  craftsmen  had  it  not  been 

211 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

for  a  growing  sense  of  anxiety  concerning  my  mother's  con 
dition.  Father's  brief  notes  were  not  reassuring.  "Your 
mother  needs  you,"  he  said,  in  effect,  and  I  began  to  plan 
our  return.  "We  have  a  few  engagements,"  I  wrote,  "but 
you  may  expect  us  for  our  usual  Thanksgiving  Dinner." 

I  will  not  say  that  I  had  a  definite  premonition  of  trouble, 
I  was  just  uneasy.  I  felt  inclined  to  drop  all  our  social 
engagements  and  start  for  home  but  I  did  not  carry  out 
the  impulse. 

On  Sunday,  the  twenty-fifth  of  November,  after  a  de 
lightful  dinner  with  Augustus  Thomas  in  his  home  at  New 
Rochelle,  Zulime  and  I  returned  to  our  apartment  in  hap 
piest  humor,  to  be  met  by  a  telegram  which  went  to  my 
heart  like  the  thrust  of  a  bayonet.  It  was  from  my  father. 
"Your  mother  is  very  low.  Come  at  once" 

For  a  few  moments  I  remained  standing,  like  a  man 
stunned  by  a  savage  blow.  Then  I  awoke  to  the  need  of 
haste  in  getting  away  to  the  West.  It  was  five  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon,  and  the  last  train  which  would  enable  us  to 
connect  with  the  Milwaukee  train  from  Chicago  to  West 
Salem,  left  at  half-past  six.  "We  must  make  that  train," 
I  said  to  Zulime  with  a  desperate  realization  of  the  need 
of  haste. 

The  rush  of  packing,  the  excitement  of  getting  to  the 
station  kept  me  from  the  sinking  of  spirit,  the  agony  of 
self-accusation  which  set  in  the  moment  we  were  safely  in 
the  sleeping  car,  and  speeding  on  our  homeward  way.  "If 
only  we  can  reach  her  before  it  is  too  late,"  was  my  prayer. 
"I  shall  never  forgive  myself  for  leaving  her.  I  knew  she- 
was  not  well,"  I  confessed  to  Zulime,  whose  serene  optimism 
comforted  me,  or  at  least  dulled  the  edge  of  my  self- 
reproach.  Again  I  telegraphed  that  we  were  coming,  giving 
the  name  and  number  of  our  train,  hoping  to  have  an 
encouraging  reply  from  father  or  the  doctor  during  the 
evening,  but  none  came, 

212 


The    Empty    Room 

The  long  agonizing  hours  wore  on.  A  hundred  times  I 
accused  myself,  "I  should  not  have  left  her." 

At  all  points  where  I  attacked  myself,  my  wife  defended 
me,  excused  me,  and  yet  I  could  not  clear  myself — could 
not  rest.  In  imagination  I  pictured  that  dear,  sweet  face 
turned  toward  the  door,  and  heard  that  faint  voice  asking 
for  me. 

It  is  true  I  had  done  many  considerate  things  for  her, 
but  I  had  not  done  enough.  Money  I  had  given  her,  and 
a  home,  but  I  had  not  given  her  as  much  of  my  time,  my 
service,  as  I  might  have  done, — as  I  should  have  done.  My 
going  away  to  the  city  at  the  very  moment  when  my  pres 
ence  was  most  necessary  seemed  base  desertion.  While 
she  had  been  suffering,  longing  and  lonely,  I  had  been  feast' 
ing.  All  my  honors,  all  my  writing,  seemed  at  this  mo 
ment  too  slight,  too  trivial  to  counter-balance  my  mother's 
need,  my  mother's  love. 

Midnight  came  without  a  message,  and  I  went  to  bed, 
slightly  comforted,  hoping  that  a  turn  for  the  better  had 
taken  place.  I  slept  fitfully,  waking  again  and  again  to 
the  bleak  possibilities  of  the  day.  A  persistent  vision  of 
a  gray-haired  mother  watching  and  waiting  for  her  sons 
filled  my  brain.  That  she  was  also  longing  for  Zulime  I 
knew,  for  she  loved  her,  and  thought  of  her  as  a  daughter. 

In  this  agony  of  remorse  and  fear  I  wore  out  the  night, 
and  as  no  word  came  in  the  morning,  I  ate  my  breakfast 
in  half-recovered  tranquillity. 

"It  must  be  that  she  is  better,"  Zulime  said,  but  at  nine 
o'clock  a  telegram  from  the  doctor  destroyed  all  hope. 
"Your  mother  is  unconscious.  Do  not  hope  to  find  her 
alive,"  was  his  desolating  message. 

Every  devoted  son  who  reads  this  line  will  shiver  as  I 
shivered.  That  warning  came  like  a  wind  from  the  dark 
spaces  of  a  bleak,  uncharted  deep.  It  changed  my  world. 
For  twenty  years  my  mother  had  been  my  chief  care.  My 

213 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

daily  thought  ran  to  her.  Only  when  deeply  absorbed  in 
my  work  had  she  been  absent  from  my  conscious  mind. 
For  her  I  had  planned,  for  her  I  had  saved,  for  her  I  had 
built,  and  now 1 

That  day  was  the  longest,  bitterest,  I  had  ever  known, 
for  the  reason  that,  mixed  with  my  grief,  my  sense  of  re 
morse,  was  a  feeling  of  utter  helplessness.  In  desperate  de 
sire  for  haste  I  could  only  lumpishly  wait.  Another  day 
of  agony,  another  interminable  night  of  pain  must  pass 
before  I  could  reach  the  shadowed  Homestead.  Nothing 
could  shorten  the  interval.  Then,  too,  I  realized  that  she 
whom  I  would  comfort  had  already  gone  beyond  my  aid, 
beyond  any  comfort  I  could  send. 

Over  and  over  I  repeated,  "If  only  we  had  started  a  few 
days  sooner!"  The  truth  is  I  had  failed  of  a  son's  duty 
just  when  that  duty  was  most  needed,  and  this  conviction 
brought  an  almost  intolerable  ache  into  my  throat.  Noth 
ing  that  Zulime  could  do  or  say  removed  that  pain.  I  could 
not  eat,  and  I  could  not  rest. 

We  reached  Chicago  in  time  to  catch  the  night  train  at 
ten  o'clock,  and  in  almost  utter  mental  exhaustion  I  fell 
asleep  about  midnight,  and  slept  till  nearly  daylight. 

Father  met  us  at  the  train,  as  he*  had  so  often  done  be 
fore,  but  this  time  there  was  something  in  the  pinched  gray 
look  of  his  face,  something  in  the  filmed  light  of  his  eagle 
eyes  which  denoted,  movingly,  the  tragic  experiences 
through  which  he  had  just  passed.  Before  he  spoke  I  knew 
that  mother  had  passed  beyond  my  reach. 

As  he  gripped  my  hand  I  perceived  that  he  was  smitten 
but  unbowed.  He  was  taking  his  orders  like  a  soldier, 
without  complaint  or  question. — Only  when  Zulime  kissed 
him  did  he  give  way. 

As  we  entered  the  gate  I  perceived  with  a  pang  of  dread 
the  wheeled  chair,  standing  empty  on  the  porch,  pathetic 

214 


The    Empty    Room 

witness  of  the  one  who  had  no  further  need  of  it.  Within 
doors,  the  house  showed  the  disorder,  the  desolate  con 
fusion,  the  terror  which  death  had  brought.  The  furniture 
was  disarranged  —  the  floor  muddy,  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
chill  little  parlor  rested  a  sinister,  flower-strewn  box.  In 
this  was  all  that  remained  of  Isabel  McClintock,  my 
mother. 

For  a  few  minutes  I  stood  looking  about  me,  a  scalding 
blur  in  my  eyes,  a  choking  in  my  throat.  The  south  room, 
her  room,  was  empty,  intolerably,  accusingly  empty.  The 
gentle,  gray-haired  figure  was  no  longer  in  its  place  before 
the  window.  The  smiling  lips  which  had  so  often  touched 
my  cheek  on  my  return  were  cold.  The  sweet,  hesitant 
voice  was  forever  silent. 

Her  dear  face  I  did  not  see.  I  refused  to  look  upon  her 
in  her  coffin.  I  wanted  to  remember  her  as  she  appeared 
when  I  said  good-by  to  her  that  bright  October  evening, 
her  white  hair  gleaming  in  the  light  of  the  lamp,  while  soft 
curves  about  her  lips  suggested  a  beautiful  serenity.  How 
patient  and  loving  she  had  been!  Even  though  she  feared 
that  she  might  never  see  us  again  she  had  sent  us  away  in 
cheerful  self-sacrifice. 

Father  was  composed  but  tense.  He  went  about  his 
duties  with  solemn  resignation,  and,  an  hour  or  two  later, 
he  said  to  me,  "You  and  I  must  go  down  and  select  a 
burial  lot,  a  place  for  your  mother  and  me." 

It  was  a  desolate  November  morning,  raw  and  gloomy, 
but  the  gray  sky  and  the  patient,  bare-limbed  elms  were 
curiously  medicinal  to  my  sore  heart.  In  some  strange  way 
they  comforted  me.  Snow  was  in  the  air  and  father  me 
chanically  weather-wise,  said,  without  thinking  of  the  bitter 
irony  of  his  words  —  "Regular  Thanksgiving  weather." 

Thanksgiving  weather!  Yes,  but  what  Thanksgiving 
could  there  be  for  him  or  for  me,  now? 


215 


/ 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

The  day  of  the  funeral  was  still  more  savagely  cold  and 
bleak,  and  I  resented  its  pitiless  gloom.  The  wind  which 
blew  over  the  open  grave  of  my  dead  mother  was  sinister 
as  hate,  and  the  snow  which  fell,  intolerably  stern.  I  turned 
away.  I  could  not  see  that  box  lowered  into  the  merciless 
soil.  My  mother's  spirit  was  not  there — I  knew  that — and 
yet  I  could  not  bear  to  think  of  those  tender  lips,  those  lov 
ing  hands  going  into  the  dark.  It  was  a  harsh  bed  for  one 
so  gentle  and  so  dear. 

Back  to  the  Homestead  we  drove — back  to  an  empty 
shell.  The  place  in  which  Isabel  Garland's  wish  had  been 
law  for  so  many  years  was  now  desolate  and  drear,  and 
return  would  have  been  impossible  for  me  had  it  not  been 
for  the  presence  of  my  wife,  whose  serene  soul  was  my 
comfort  and  my  stay.  "You  have  done  all  that  a  son  could 
do,"  she  insisted,  and  it  was  a  comfort  to  have  her  say  this 
even  though  I  knew  that  it  was  not  true,  her  faith  in  me 
and  her  youth  and  beauty  partly  redeemed  me  from  the 
awful  emptiness  of  that  home.  Without  her  (and  all  that 
she  represented)  my  father  and  I  would  have  been  victims 
of  a  black  despair. 

I  had  never  possessed  a  definite  belief  in  immortality  and 
yet,  as  we  gathered  about  our  table  that  night,  I  could  not 
rid  myself  of  a  feeling  that  my  mother  was  in  her  room, 
and  that  she  might  at  any  moment  cough,  or  stir,  or  call  to 
me.  Realizing  with  appalling  force  that  so  far  as  my  philos 
ophy  went  our  separation  was  eternal,  I  nevertheless  hoped 
that  her  spirit  was  with  us  at  that  moment,  I  did  not  know 
it — I  desired  it.  In  the  sense  which  would  have  made  be 
lief  a  solace  and  relief,  I  was  agnostic. 

"How  strange  it  all  seems! "  my  father  exclaimed,  and  on 
his  face  lay  such  lines  of  dismay  as  I  had  never  seen  written 
there  before.  "It  seems  as  though  I  ought  to  go  and  wheel 
her  in  to  dinner." 

I  marvel  now,  as  I  marveled  then,  at  the  buoyant  help- 

216 


The    Empty    Room 

fulness,  the  brave  patience  of  my  wife  in  the  presence  of 
her  stricken  and  bewildered  household.  She  sorrowed  but 
she  kept  her  calm  judgment,  and  set  about  restoring  the  in 
terrupted  routine  of  our  lives.  Putting  away  all  signs  of 
the  gray  intruder  whose  hands  had  scattered  the  ashes  of 
ruin  across  our  floor,  she  called  on  me  to  aid  in  uniting  our 
broken  circle.  Under  her  influence  I  soon  regained  a  cer 
tain  composure.  With  a  realization  that  it  was  not  fair 
that  she  should  bear  all  the  burden  of  the  family  reorganiza 
tion,  I  turned  from  death  and  faced  the  future  with  her. 
On  her  depended  the  continuation  of  our  family.  She  was 
its  hope  and  its  saving  grace. 


217 


BOOK  II 

CHAPTER  FIFTEEN 
A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

MY  first  morning  in  the  old  Homestead  without  my 
mother  was  so  poignant  with  its  sense  of  loss,  so 
rich  with  memories  both  sweet  and  sorrowful,  that  I  shut 
myself  in  my  study  and  began  a  little  tribute  to  her,  a 
sketch  which  I  called  The  Wife  of  a  Pioneer.  Into  this  I 
poured  the  love  I  had  felt  but  failed  to  express  as  fully  as 
I  should  have  done  while  she  was  alive.  To  make  this  her 
memorial  was  my  definite  purpose. 

As  I  went  on  I  found  myself  deep  in  her  life  on  the  farm 
in  Iowa,  and  the  cheerful  heroism  of  her  daily  treadmill 
came  back  to  me  with  such  appeal  that  I  could  scarcely  see 
the  words  in  which  I  was  recording  her  history.  Visioning 
the  long  years  of  her  drudgery,  I  recalled  her  early  rising, 
and  suffered  with  her  the  never-ending  round  of  dish 
washing,  churning,  sewing,  and  cooking,  realizing  more 
fully  than  ever  before  that  in  all  of  this  slavery  she  was  but 
one  of  a  million  martyrs.  All  our  neighbors'  wives  walked 
the  same  round.  On  such  as  they  rests  the  heavier  part 
of  the  home  and  city  building  in  the  West.  The  wives  of  the 
farm  are  the  unnamed,  unrewarded  heroines  of  the  border. 

For  nearly  a  week  I  lingered  upon  this  writing,  and  having 
completed  it  I  was  moved  to  print  it,  in  order  that  it  might 
remind  some  other  son  of  his  duty  to  his  ageing  parents 

219 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

sitting  in  the  light  of  their  lonely  hearth,  and  in  doing  this 
I  again  vaguely  forecast  the  composition  of  an  autobiogra 
phic  manuscript — one  which  should  embody  minutely  and 
simply  the  homely  daily  toil  of  my  father's  family,  although 
I  could  not,  at  the  moment,  define  the  precise  form  into 
which  the  story  would  fall. 

The  completion  of  the  memorial  to  my  mother  eased  my 
heart  of  its  bitter  self-accusation,  and  a  little  later  I  re 
turned  to  my  accustomed  routine,  realizing  that  in  my  wife 
now  lay  my  present  incentive  and  my  future  support.  She 
became  the  center  of  my  world.  In  her  rested  my  hope 
of  happiness.  My  mother  was  a  memory. 

To  remain  longer  in  the  old  home  was  painful,  for  to  me 
everything  suggested  the  one  for  whom  it  had  been  estab 
lished.  The  piano  I  had  bought  for  her,  the  chair  in  which 
she  had  loved  to  sit,  her  spectacles  on  the  stand — all  these 
mute  witnesses  of  her  absence  benumbed  me  as  I  walked 
about  her  room.  Only  in  my  work-shop  was  I  able  to  find 
even  momentary  relief  from  my  sense  of  irreparable  and 
eternal  loss. 

Father,  as  though  bewildered  by  the  sudden  change  in 
his  life,  turned  to  Zulime  with  a  pathetic  weakness  which 
she  met  with  a  daughter's  tender  patience  and  a  woman's 
intuitive  understanding.  He  talked  to  her  of  his  first 
meeting  with  "Belle"  and  his  tone  was  that  of  a  lover,  one 
who  had  loved  long  and  deeply,  and  this  I  believe  was  true. 
In  spite  of  unavoidable  occasional  moments  of  friction,  he 
and  Isabel  McClintock  had  lived  in  harmony.  They  had 
been  spiritually  married,  and  now,  in  looking  back  over  the 
long  road  he  and  she  had  traveled  together,  he  recalled  only 
its  pleasant  places.  His  memories  were  all  of  the  sunlit 
meadows  and  starry  nights  along  the  way.  Prairie  pinks 
and  wild  roses  hid  the  thorns  and  the  thistles  of  the  wayside. 

His  joy  in  the  songs  she  had  sung  came  back,  intensified 

220 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

now  by  tender  association  with  her  face  and  voice.  The 
knowledge  that  she  who  had  voiced  them  so  often,  could 
voice  them  no  more,  gave  to  some  of  the  words  an  almost 
overpowering  pathos,  and  when  he  asked  me  to  sing  them, 
I  could  not  immediately  comply.  To  him  they  brought 
grateful  tears  and  a  consoling  sadness,  to  me  they  came 
with  tragic  significance. 

"But   that   mother   she   is  gone 
Calm  she  sleeps  beneath  the  stone" 

was  not  a  song  but  a  reality. 

More  and  more  he  dwelt  upon  the  time  when  she  was 
young,  and  as  the  weeks  went  by  his  sorrow  took  on  a  wist 
ful,  vague  longing  for  the  past.  Through  the  gate  of 
memory  he  reentered  the  world  of  his  youth  and  walked 
once  more  with  William  and  David  and  Luke.  The  mists 
which  filled  his  eyes  had  nothing  hot  or  withering  in  their 
touch — they  comforted  him.  Whether  he  hoped  to  meet 
his  love  in  some  other  world  or  not  I  do  not  know — but  I 
think  he  did. 

In  the  midst  of  these  deep  emotional  personal  experiences, 
I  began  to  write  (almost  as  if  in  self-defense),  a  novel  which 
I  called  The  Gray  Horse  Troop,  a  story  which  had  been 
slowly  forming  in  my  mind  ever  since  my  visit  to  Lame 
Deer  in  1897.  This  was  my  first  actual  start  upon  its  com 
position  and  I  was  soon  in  full  drive  again,  and  just  in  pro 
portion  as  I  took  on  these  fictional  troubles  did  my  own 
lose  their  power.  To  Zulime,  with  a  feeling  of  confidence  in 
myself,  I  now  said,  "You  need  not  remain  here  any  longer. 
Go  down  to  Chicago  and  wait  for  me.  I'll  come  as  soon 
as  father  feels  like  letting  me  go.  I  am  all  right  now. 
I  am  at  work." 

She  smiled  but  replied  with  firm  decision,  "I  shall  stay 

221 


A    Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

right  here  until  you  can  go  with  me.     Father  needs  me 
more  than  he  needs  you." 

This  was  true.  She  would  have  been  deserting  two  men 
instead  of  one — and  so  she  stayed  while  I  worked  away 
at  my  story,  finding  comfort  in  the  realization  of  her 
presence. 

At  last  my  father  said,  "You  mustn't  stay  here  on  my 
account;  I  can  take  care  of  myself." 

Here  spoke  the  stark  spirit  of  the  man.  Accustomed  to 
provide  for  himself  in  camp  and  on  the  trail,  he  saw  no 
reason  why  he  should  not  contrive  to  live  here  in  the 
sheltered  village,  surrounded  by  his  friends;  but  Zulime  in 
sisted  upon  his  retaining  our  housekeeper,  and  to  this  he 
consented,  although  he  argued  against  it.  "I've  been 
keeping  house  alone  for  six  years  out  there  in  Dakota;  I 
guess  I  can  do  as  well  here." 

"All  right,  father,"  I  said,  "we'll  go,  but  if  you  need  me 
let  me  know." 

A  return  to  the  city  did  not  interrupt  my  writing.  My 
new  novel  now  had  entire  possession  of  me.  So  far  as 
my  mornings  were  concerned  I  was  forgetful  of  everything 
else — and  yet,  often,  as  I  put  aside  my  work  for  the  day, 
I  caught  myself  saying,  "Now  I  must  write  to  mother"— 
and  a  painful  clutch  came  into  my  throat  as  I  realized, 
once  again,  that  I  no  longer  had  a  mother  waiting  for  a 
letter.  For  twenty  years  no  matter  where  I  had  been  or 
what  I  had  been  doing  I  had  written  to  her  an  almost  daily 
message  and  now  she  was  no  longer  in  my  reach! — Was 
she  near  me  on  some  other  plane? 

The  good  friendship  of  the  Eagles'  Nest  Campers  was 
of  the  highest  value  to  me  at  this  time.  Without  them 
Chicago  would  have  been  a  desert.  Henry  Fuller's  gay 
spirit,  Lorado's  swift  wit  and  the  good  fraternal  compan 
ionship  of  Charles  Francis  Browne  were  of  daily  comfort; 

222 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

but  above  all  others  I  depended  upon  my  wife  whose  serene 
ly  optimistic  spirit  carried  me  over  many  a  deep  slough  of 
despond.  How  I  leaned  upon  her!  Her  patience  with 
me  was  angelic. 

A  writer,  like  an  artist,  is  apt  to  be  a  selfish  brute,  tending 
to  ignore  everything  which  does  not  make  for  the  progress 
of  his  beloved  manuscript.  He  resents  every  interruption 
every  hindering  distraction,  as  a  hellish  contrivance,  mali 
ciously  designed  to  worry  or  obstruct  him — At  least  I  am 
that  way.  That  I  was  a  burden,  an  intolerable  burden  to 
my  wife,  at  times — many  times — I  must  admit — but  she 
understood  and  was  charitable.  She  defended  me  as  best 
she  could  from  interruption  and  smoothed  my  daily  course 
with  deft  hand.  Slowly  my  novel  began  to  take  shape  and 
as  I  drew  farther  away  from  the  remorseful  days  which 
made  my  work  seem  selfish  and  vain,  I  recovered  an  illogical 
cheerfulness. 

We  saw  very  few  Chicago  people  and  in  contrast  with 
our  previous  "season"  in  New  York  our  daily  walk  was 
uneventful,  almost  rural,  in  its  quiet  round.  Christmas  came 
to  us  without  special  meaning  but  1900  went  out  with  The 
Eagle's  Heart  on  the  market,  and  Her  Mountain  Lover 
going  to  press.  Aside  from  my  sense  of  bereavement,  and  a 
certain  anxiety  concerning  my  lonely  old  father,  I  was 
at  peace  and  Zulime  seemed  happy  and  confident. 

There  was  no  escaping  my  filial  responsibility,  however, 
for  in  the  midst  of  this  serene  season,  a  sudden  call  for 
help  came  from  West  Salem.  "Your  father  is  ill  and  needs 
you,"  wrote  the  doctor  and  I  went  at  once  to  his  aid. 

It  was  a  cheerless  home-coming, — one  that  I  could  hardly 
endure  the  thought  of,  and  yet  I  was  glad  that  I  had  not 
followed  my  first  impulse  to  delay  it,  for  as  I  entered  the 
door  of  the  desolate  lonely  house  I  found  the  old  soldier 
stretched  out  on  a  couch,  piteously  depressed  in  mind  and 

223 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

flushed  with  fever.    I  had  not  arrived  a  minute  too  soon. 

What  a  change  had  come  over  the  Homestead!  It  was 
but  a  shell,  a  mansion  from  which  the  spirit  for  whom  it 
had  been  built  was  fled.  Its  empty,  dusty  rooms,  so  cold 
and  silent  and  dead — were  dreadful  to  me,  but  I  did  my  best 
to  fill  them  with  cheer  for  my  father's  sake. 

As  the  day  wore  on  I  said  to  him,  "It  seems  like  Sunday 
to  me.  I  have  a  feeling  that  mother  and  Zulime  are  away 
at  church  and  that  they  may,  at  any  moment,  come  in 
together." 

"I  wish  Zuleema  would  come,"  my  father  said,  and  as  if 
in  answer  to  his  wish,  she  surprised  us  by  a  telegram. 
"I  am  coming  home,"  she  wired,  "meet  me  at  the  station 
to-morrow  morning,"  and  this  message  made  my  father  so 
happy  that  it  troubled  me,  for  it  revealed  to  me  how 
deeply  he  had  missed  her,  and  made  plain  to  me  also  how 
difficult  it  would  be  for  me  to  take  her  away  from  him 
thereafter. 

Her  coming  put  such  life  in  the  house  that  I  decided  to 
invite  a  number  of  my  father's  friends  and  neighbors  to 
spend  the  evening  with  us,  and  the  thought  of  this  party 
quite  restored  him  to  his  natural  optimism.  His  confidence 
in  his  new  daughter's  ability  had  become  fixed.  He  accepted 
her  judgments  almost  instantly.  He  bragged  of  her  skill 
as  a  cook,  as  an  artist  and  as  a  musician,  quite  shamelessly; 
but  as  this  only  amused  her  I  saw  no  reason  for  interfering 
— I  even  permitted  him  to  boast  of  my  singing.  He  believed 
me  to  be  one  of  the  most  remarkable  ballad  singers  in  the 
world,  and  to  hear  me  sing  "The  Ninety  and  Nine"  with  all 
the  dramatic  modulations  of  a1  professional  evangelist  af 
forded  him  the  highest  satisfaction. 

At  his  urging  we  made  elaborate  preparations  for  feed 
ing  our  guests,  and  Zulime  arranged  a  definite  program  of 
entertainment.  When  conversation  slackened  I  was  to 

224 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

sing  while  she  played  my  accompaniment,  and  to  fill  out  the 
program  I  volunteered  to  read  one  of  my  short  stories. 

The  outcome  of  the  evening  was  amusingly  destructive 
of  all  our  kindly  plans.  Before  the  women  had  fairly  re 
moved  their  wraps,  Lottridge  drew  a  box  of  dominoes  from 
his  pocket,  saying,  "I  didn't  know  but  you'd  be  a  little 
short  on  'bones,'  "  and  Shane  called  out,  "Well,  now,  Rich 
ard,  what  about  tables?" — In  five  minutes  they  were  all — 
every  mother's  son  and  daughter  of  them — bent  above  a 
row  of  dominoes! 

No  entertainment  on  the  part  of  host  or  hostess  was 
necessary  till  the  time  came  to  serve  supper.  All  our  lit 
erary  and  musical  preparations  went  for  naught! — At  ten 
o'clock  they  rose  as  one  man,  thanked  us  for  a  pleasant 
evening  and  went  home! 

Zulime  laughed  merrily  over  the  wreck  of  our  self-sacri 
ficing  program  when  we  were  alone.  "Well,  we'll  know 
exactly  what  to  do  next  time.  All  we  need  to  do  is  to  fur 
nish  dominoes  and  tables,  our  guests  will  do  the  rest." 

My  young  wife's  presence  in  the  Homestead  almost  re 
deemed  it  from  its  gloom,  and  yet  I  was  not  content.  The 
complications  in  the  situation  defied  adjustment.  My  father 
needed  us,  but  the  city  was  essential  to  me.  As  a  writer, 
I  should  have  been  remorselessly  selfish.  I  should  have 
taken  my  wife  back  to  Chicago  at  once,  but  my  New  Eng 
land  conscience  would  not  let  me  forget  how  lonely  that 
old  man  would  be  in  this  empty  house,  silent,  yet  filled  with 
voices  of  the  moaning,  swaying  branches  of  its  bleak  mid 
winter  elms. 

My  problem  was,  in  fact,  only  another  characteristic 
cruel  phase  of  American  family  history.  In  a  new  land* 
like  ours,  the  rising  generation  finds  itself,  necessarily,  al 
most  cruelly,  negligent  of  its  progenitors.  Youth  moves  on, 
away  and  up  from  the  farm  and  the  village.  Age  remains 

225 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

below  and  behind.  The  tragedy  of  this  situation  lies  in 
the  fact  that  there  is  no  happy  solution  of  the  problem. 
Youth  can  not  be  shackled,  age  can  not  be  transplanted. 

In  my  case,  I  foresaw  that  the  situation  would  inevitably 
become  more  and  more  difficult  year  by  year.  My  father 
could  not  live  in  any  city,  and  for  me  to  give  up  my  life 
in  Chicago  and  New  York  in  order  to  establish  a  permanent 
home  in  West  Salem,  involved  a  sacrifice  which  I  was  not 
willing  to  make, — either  on  my  own  account  or  Zulime's. 
I  had  no  right  to  demand  such  devotion  from  her.  Like 
thousands  of  other  men  of  my  age  I  was  snared  in  cir 
cumstances — forced  to  do  that  which  appeared  unfilial  and 
neglectful. 

In  the  midst  of  these  perplexities  I  was  confronted  by  a 
new  and  surprising  problem — I  had  money  to  invest!  For 
the  serial  use  of  The  Eagle's  Heart  and  Her  Mountain 
Lover  I  had  received  thirty-five  hundred  dollars,  and  as 
each  of  these  books  had  also  brought  in  an  additional  five 
hundred  dollars  advance  royalty,  I  was  for  the  moment 
embarrassed  with  cash. 

In  this  extremity  I  turned,  naturally,  toward  Oklahoma. 
I  recalled  the  beautiful  prairies  I  had  crossed  on  my  way 
to  the  Washitay.  "Another  visit  to  Darlington  will  not 
only  furnish  new  material  for  my  book  of  Indian  stories, 
but  enable  me  to  survey  and  purchase  a  half-section  of 
land,"  I  explained  to  my  father.  "Like  Henry  George  we 
both  understand  the  value  of  unearned  increment." 

In  this  plan  he  agreed  and  two  days  after  making  this 
decision  I  was  at  Colony,  Oklahoma,  where  I  spent  nearly 
the  entire  month  of  May,  and  when  I  returned  I  was  the 
•owner  of  three  hundred  and  twenty  acres  of  land. 

My  return  to  the  Homestead  found  Zulime  deep  in  the 
rush  of  the  berry  season.  As  mistress  of  a  garden  her  in 
terest  in  its  produce  was  almost  comical.  She  thought  less 

226 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

of  art,  she  neither  modeled  nor  painted.  She  cared  less 
and  less  for  the  Camp  at  Eagle's  Nest,  exulting  more  and 
more  in  the  spacious  rooms  of  her  home,  and  in  the  abun 
dance  of  her  soil.  Her  love  of  the  Homestead  delighted  me, 
but  I  was  a  little  disappointed  by  the  coolness  with  which 
she  received  my  gift  of  a  deed  to  a  quarter  section  of  Okla 
homa  land.  She  smiled  and  handed  it  back  to  me  as  if  it 
were  a  make-believe  deed. 

It  chanced  that  July  came  in  unusually  dry  and  hot,  and 
in  the  midst  of  a  dreadful  week,  she  fell  ill,  so  ill  that  she 
was  confined  to  her  bed  for  nearly  three  weeks,  and  as  I 
watched  beside  her  during  those  cloudless  days  and  sultry 
nights,  my  mind  turned  with  keenest  longing  toward  the 
snow-lined  crests  of  the  Colorado  mountains,  and  especially 
to  the  glorious  forests  of  the  White  River  Plateau.  The 
roar  of  snowy  Uncompagre,  the  rush  of  the  deep-flowing 
Gunnison,  and  the  serrate  line  of  The  Needle  Peaks,  called 
us  both,  and  when  at  last,  she  was  strong  enough  to  travel., 
we  packed  our  trunks  and  fled  the  low  country,  hurrying 
in  almost  desperate  desire  to  reach  the  high,  cool  valleys 
of  Colorado. 

O,  that  torturing  journey!  As  we  neared  Omaha  the 
thermometer  rose  to  105  in  the  Pullman  car,  and  remained 
there  nearly  all  day.  For  twelve  hours  we  steamed,  sitting 
rigidly  erect  in  our  chairs,  dreading  to  move,  sweltering  in 
silence,  waiting  with  passionate  intensity  for  the  cool  wind 
which  we  knew  was  certain  to  meet  us  somewhere  on  our 
upward  course. 

The  sun  went  down  in  murky  flame  and  the  very  shadows 
were  hot,  but  deep  in  the  night  I  was  roused  by  a  delicious 
puff  of  mountain  air,  and  calling  to  Zulime,  suffering  in 
her  berth,  I  said,  "Worry  no  longer  about  the  heat.  From 
this  hour  on,  every  moment  will  be  joy.  You  can  forget 
the  weather  in  Colorado." 

227 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

What  exquisite  relief  came  with  that  change  of  air! 
What  sweetness  of  promise!  What  buoyancy  of  expecta 
tion! — We  went  to  sleep  with  the  wind  blowing  in  upon  us, 
and  when  we  woke  the  mountains  were  in  sight. 

At  the  station  in  the  Springs,  our  good  friend  Louis 
Ehrich  again  met  us,  and  in  half  an  hour  we  stood  in  the 
same  room  which  we  had  occupied  on  our  wedding  trip,  a 
room  whose  windows  faced  directly  upon  the  Rampart 
range,  already  deep  purple  with  the  shadow  of  the  clouds. 
By  contrast  with  our  torrid  railway  car  this  was  Paradise 
itself — so  clean,  so  cool,  so  sweet,  so  tonic  was  the  air, 
and  when  at  noon  a  storm  hid  the  peaks,  and  lightning 
crashed  above  the  foot  hills,  the  arid  burning  plain  over 
which  we  came  was  forgotten — or  remembered  only  to  make 
our  enjoyment  of  the  mountain  air  more  complete. 

The  splendor  of  that  mighty  wall,  the  kiss  of  that  wind, 
the  memory  of  that  majestic  peak  looming  amid  the  stars, 
comes  back  to  me  as  I  write,  filling  me  with  an  almost 
intolerable  longing  to  recover  the  magic  of  that  summer, 
a  summer  which  has  receded  with  the  speed  of  an  eagle. 

Each  day  we  breakfasted  and  lunched  and  dined  on  a 
vine-clad  porch  in  full  view  of  the  mountains.  Each  after 
noon  we  drove  or  rode  horseback  or  loitered  on  the  lawn. 
Never  in  all  my  life  had  I  come  so  near  to  flawless  content, 
and  Zulime,  equally  joyous,  swiftly  returned  to  perfect 
health.  Her  restoration  was  magical. 

Louis  Ehrich,  one  of  the  gentlest  men  I  have  ever  known, 
rejoiced  in  our  presence.  He  lived  but  to  fill  our  days 
with  pleasure.  He  and  I  had  been  friends  for  ten  years,  and 
his  family  now  took  my  wife  into  favor — I  was  about 
to  say  into  equal  favor,  but  that  would  not  be  true.  They 
very  properly  put  her  above  me  in  the  scale  of  their  affec 
tion,  and  to  this  subordination  I  submitted  without  com 
plaint,  or  even  question. 

228 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

It  chanced  that  on  the  second  day  of  our  stay  the 
Ehrichs  were  due  at  a  garden  party  in  "Glen  Eyrie,"  General 
Palmer's  palatial  home  in  the  foot  hills,  and  kindly  obtained 
permission  to  bring  us  with  them.  That  drive  across  the 
mesa  was  like  a  journey  into  some  far  country — passage 
to  a  land  which  was  neither  America  nor  England,  neither 
East  nor  West.  To  reach  the  Castle  we  entered  a  gate 
at  the  mouth  of  a  narrow,  wooded  canon  and  drove  for 
nearly  a  mile  toward  the  west  through  a  most  beautiful 
garden  in  which  all  the  native  shrubs  and  wild  flowers  had 
been  assembled  and  planted  with  exquisite  art. 

People  were  streaming  in  over  the  mountain  roads,  some 
on  horseback,  some  on  bicycles,  some  in  glittering,  gayly- 
painted  wagons,  and  when  we  reached  the  lawn  before  the 
great  stone  mansion,  we  found  a  very  curious  and  interest 
ing  throng  of  guests,  and  in  the  midst  of  them,  the  General, 
tall,  soldierly,  clothed  in  immaculate  linen  and  wearing  a 
broad  white  western  hat,  was  receiving  his  friends,  assisted 
by  his  three  pretty  young  daughters. 

The  house  was  a  veritable  chateau — the  garden  a  won 
derland  of  Colorado  plants  and  flowers,  skilfully  disposed 
among  the  native  ledges  and  scattered  along  the  bases  of 
the  cliffs  whose  rugged  sides  enclosed  the  mansion  grounds. 
The  towers  (of  gray  stone)  were  English,  but  the  plants 
and  blooms  were  native  to  the  Rampart  foot  hills.  In  a 
very  real  fashion  aGlen  Eyrie"  bodied  forth  the  singular 
and  powerful  character  of  its  owner,  who  was  at  once 
an  English  squire,  a  Pennsylvania  civil  war  veteran,  and 
a  western  railway  engineer. 

Food  and  drink  and  ices  of  various  kinds  were  being 
served  under  the  trees  with  lavish  hospitality,  and  groups 
of  young  people  were  wandering  about  the  spacious  grounds 
— grounds  so  beautiful  by  reason  of  nature's  adjustment, 
as  well  as  by  way  of  the  landscape  gardener's  art,  that  they 

229 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

made  the  senses  ache  with  a  knowledge  of  their  exquisite 
impermanency.  It  was  a  kind  of  poem  expressed  in  green 
and  gold  and  scarlet. 

Zulime  greatly  interested  the  Palmer  girls,  and  the  Gen 
eral,  who  remembered  me  pleasantly,  was  most  amiable  to 
us  both.  "You  must  come  again,"  he  said,  and  to  me  he 
added,  "You  must  come  over  some  day  and  ride  my  trails 
with  me." 

As  I  mingled  with  that  throng  of  joyous  folk,  I  lost  my 
self.  I  became  an  actor  in  a  prodigious  and  picturesque 
American  social  comedy.  For  stage  we  had  the  lawn,  banks 
of  flowers,  and  the  massive  towers  of  the  castle.  For 
background  rose  the  rugged  hills!— Nothing  could  have  been 
farther  from  our  home  in  Neshonoc.  Glowing  with  esthetic 
delight  in  the  remote  and  singular  beauty  of  the  place, 
Zulime  took  an  artist's  keen  interest  in  alien  loveliness.  It 
threw  our  life  into  commonplace  drab.  And  yet  it  was 
factitious.  It  had  the  transient  quality  of  a  dream  in  which 
we  were  but  masqueraders. 

Two  days  later,  at  the  invitation  of  General  Palmer,  we 
joined  his  party  in  a  trip  over  the  short-line  railway  to 
Cripple  Creek,  traveling  in  his  private  car,  and  the  luxury 
of  this  novel  experience  made  my  wife's  eyes  shine  with 
girlish  delight.— I  professed  alarm,  "I  don't  know  where 
all  this  glory  is  going  to  land  us,"  I  warned,  "after  this 
Aladdin's-lamp  luxury  and  leisure,  how  can  I  get  you  back 
into  washing  dishes  and  canning  fruit  in  West  Salem?" 

She  laughed  at  this,  as  she  did  at  most  of  my  fears. 
Serene  acceptance  of  what  came  was  her  dominant  char 
acteristic.  Her  faith  in  the  future  was  so  perfect  that  she 
was  willing  to  make  the  fullest  use  of  the  present. 

The  day  was  gloriously  clear,  with  great  white  clouds 
piled  high  above  the  peaks,  and  as  the  train  crept  steadily 
upward,  feeling  its  way  across  the  mountain's  shoulder, 

230 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

we  were  able  to  look  back  and  down  and  far  out  upon  the 
plain  which  was  a  shoreless  sea  of  liquid  opal.  At  ten 
thousand  feet  the  foot  hills  (flat  as  a  rug)  were  so  rich  in 
color,  so  alluring  in  their  spread  that  we  could  scarcely  be 
lieve  them  to  be  composed  of  rocks  and  earth. 

After  a  day  of  sight-seeing  we  returned,  at  sunset,  to  the 
Springs,  with  all  of  the  pomp  of  railway  magnates  en  tour, 
and  as  we  were  about  to  part  at  the  railway  station,  the 
General  in  curt,  off-hand  way,  asked,  "Why  not  join  my 
camping  party  at  Sierra  Blanca?  We're  going  down  there 
for  a  week  or  two,  and  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  have  you 
with  us.  Come,  and  stay  as  long  as  you  can.  We  shall 
probably  move  on  to  Wagon  Wheel  Gap  later.  Wagon 
Wheel  ought  to  interest  you." 

He  said  this  with  a  quizzical  smile,  for  he  had  been  read 
ing  my  novel  of  Colorado,  and  recognized  in  my  scene  the 
splendors  of  the  San  Juan  country.  "Your  friend  Ehrich 
is  coming,"  he  added,  "and  I  expect  Sterling  Morton  for 
a  day  or  two.  Why  not  all  come  down  together?" 

"Would  you  like  me  to  bring  my  bed  and  tent?"  I  asked. 

"As  you  please,  although  I  have  plenty  of  room  in  my 
own  outfit." 

It  happened  that  Colorado  Springs  was  holding  a  Quarto- 
Centenary,  a  kind  of  Carnival  and  Wild-West  Pageant,  to 
which  Vice-President  Roosevelt  was  coming  as  the  chief 
guest  of  honor,  and  as  soon  as  he  arrived  I  called  upon  him 
at  his  hotel.  Almost  at  once  he  asked,  "Where  is  your 
wife?  I  want  to  see  her.  Is  she  here?" 

"Yes,  she  is  staying  with  some  friends,"  I  replied. 

"I  am  very  glad  to  know  it.  I  shall  call  upon  her  to 
morrow  afternoon  as  soon  as  my  duties  at  the  carnival  are 
ended." 

The  thought  of  having  the  Vice-President  of  the  United 

231 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

States  go  out  of  his  way  to  make  a  call  upon  my  wife  gave 
me  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  for  I  realized  how  much  it 
would  mean  to  Zulime,  but  I  replied,  "We  shall  be  very 
glad  to  call  upon  you" 

"No,"  he  replied  in  his  decisive  fashion — "I  shall  call 
to-morrow  at  four  o'clock — if  that  is  convenient  to  you. 
Meanwhile  I  want  you  and  Mr.  Ehrich  to  breakfast  with 
me  here,  at  the  hotel.  I  shall  have  some  hunters  and  rough 
riders  at  my  table  whom  you  will  be  interested  to  meet." 

Of  course  I  accepted  this  invitation  instantly,  and  hur 
ried  home  to  tell  my  wife  that  "royalty"  was  about  to  call 
upon  her. 

The  Vice-President's  breakfast  party  turned  out  to  be 
a  very  curious  collection  of  mutually  repellent,  but  highly- 
developed  individualities.  There  was  John  Goff,  well  known 
as  guide  and  hunter  in  western  Colorado,  and  Marshall 
Davidson,  a  rough-rider  from  New  Mexico,  Lieutenant 
Llewellyn  of  the  Rough  Riders,  Sterling  Morton  (former 
Secretary  of  Agriculture),  a  big  impassive  Nebraska  pio 
neer;  Louis  Ehrich  (humanist  and  art  lover),  and  myself — 
I  cannot  say  that  I  in  any  way  reduced  the  high  average 
of  singularity,  but  I  was  at  least  in  the  picture — Morton 
and  Ehrich  were  not;  they  remained  curious  rather  than 
sympathetic  listeners.  While  no  longer  a  hunter  I  was  a 
trailer  and  was  able  to  understand  and  keenly  enjoy  the 
spirit  of  these  hardy  men  of  the  open. 

True  to  his  word,  Roosevelt  called  at  the  Ehrich's  that 
afternoon,  and  no  one  could  have  been  more  charming, 
more  neighborly  than  he.  He  told  of  our  first  meeting, 
smilingly  called  me  "a  Henry  George  crank,"  and  referred 
to  other  differences  which  existed  between  us.  "Differ 
ences  which  do  not  in  the  least  interfere  with  our  friend 
ship,"  he  assured  Zulime.  "Your  husband,  for  example, 
doesn't  believe  in  hunting,  and  has  always  stood  out  against 

232 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

my  shooting,"  here  he  became  quite  serious — "However, 
I've  given  up  shooting  deer  and  elk.  I  kill  only  'varmints' 
now." 

After  half  an  hour  of  lively  conversation,  he  rose  to  go 
and  as  I  went  with  him  to  the  gate,  where  his  carriage  was 
waiting,  he  said  with  earnest  emphasis,  "I  congratulate  you 
most  heartily,  my  dear  fellow.  Your  wife  is  fine!  fine!" 

As  Morton  and  Ehrich  had  accepted  General  Palmer's  in 
vitation  to  camp  with  him,  we  all  took  train  for  Fort  Gar 
land,  a  mysterious  little  town  in  Southern  Colorado,  near 
which  the  General  was  encamped.  This  expedition  particu 
larly  pleased  me  for  it  carried  me  into  the  shadow  of  Sierra 
Blanca,  one  of  the  noblest  of  Colorado's  peaks,  and  also 
into  the  edge  of  the  Mexican  settlement.  It  all  seemed 
very  remote  and  splendid  to  me  that  day. 

We  were  met  at  the  station  by  one  of  the  General's  re 
tainers  and  ten  minutes  later  found  ourselves  in  a  mountain 
wagon  and  on  our  way  toward  Old  Baldy,  the  mountain 
which  stands  just  north  of  Sierra  Blanca,  which  forms  the 
majestic  southern  bastion  of  the  Crestones. 

Mexican  huts  lined  the  way,  and  dark-skinned  farmers 
working  in  the  fields  and  about  the  corrals,  gave  evidence 
of  the  fact  that  this  "land  grant"  had  been,  at  one  time,  a 
part  of  Old  Mexico. 

"It  contains  nearly  seven  hundred  thousand  acres," 
Ehrich  explained,  "  and  is  the  property  of  General  Palmer." 

This  statement  aroused  a  sense  of  wonder  in  my  mind. 
"Think  of  being  proprietor  of  one-half  of  Sierra  Blanca?" 
I  said  to  Morton.  "Has  any  individual  a  right  to  such  a 
privilege?" 

In  a  lovely  grove  on  the  bank  of  a  rushing  glorious 
stream,  we  found  the  Lord  of  this  Demesne  and  his  three 
daughters  encamped,  attended  by  a  platoon  of  cooks,  valets, 
maids,  and  hostlers.  A  "camp"  which  highly  amused 

233 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle   Border 

Sterling  Morton,  although  he  had  moments  of  resenting  its 
luxury.  "Now  this  is  the  kind  of  'roughing  it'  I  believe  in," 
he  declared  with  a  smile.  "It  is  suited  to  elderly  old  parties 
like  Ehrich  and  myself,  but  you,  Garland,  a  youngster,  a 
trailer— should  have  no  part  in  it.  It's  too  corrupting." 

Our  luncheon,  which  contained  five  courses,  came  on 
with  the  plenitude  and  precision  of  a  meal  at  Glen  Eyrie, 
The  rusticity  of  the  function  was  altogether  confined  to 
the  benches  on  which  we  sat  and  the  tables  from  which 
we  ate — the  butlering  was  for  the  most  part  urban. 

"Why  didn't  Mrs.  Garland  come?"  asked  the  General. 

"She  had  an  engagement  or  two  that  prevented  her." 

"Oh!  She  must  come  down,"  commanded  the  General. 
"Telegraph  her  at  once  and  ask  her  when  she  can  get 
away.  I'll  send  my  car  for  her." 

This  he  did.  The  private  Pullman,  with  a  maid  and  a 
steward  in  charge,  went  back  that  night  and  on  the  second 
morning  Zulime  came  down  the  line  in  lonely  state. 

I  met  her  at  the  station,  and  for  ten  days  we  lived  the 
most  idyllic,  yet  luxurious  life  beside  that  singing  stream. 
We  rode  the  trails,  we  fished,  we  gathered  wild  flowers. 
Sometimes  of  an  afternoon  we  visited  the  ranches  or  min 
ing  towns  round  about,  feasting  at  night  on  turtle  soup,  and 
steak  and  mushrooms,  drinking  champagne  out  of  tin  cups 
with  reckless  disregard  of  camp  traditions,  utterly  without 
care  or  responsibility— in  truth  we  were  all  under  military 
discipline! 

The  General  was  a  soldier  even  in  his  recreations.  Each 
day's  program  was  laid  out  in  "orders"  issued  in  due  form 
by  the  head  of  the  expedition — and  these  arrangements 
held!  No  one  thought  of  changing  them.  Our  duty  was 
to  obey — and  enjoy. 

Never  before  in  all  my  life  had  anything  like  this  freedom 
from  responsibility,  from  expense,  come  to  me.  So  care- 

234 


A    Summer    in    the    High    Country 

free,  so  beautiful  was  our  life,  that  I  woke  each  morning 
with  a  start  of  surprise  to  find  its  magic  a  reality.  It  was 
like  the  hospitality  of  oriental  kings  in  the  fairy  stories  of 
my  childhood. 

For  four  weeks  we  lived  this  incredible  life  of  mingled 
luxury  and  mountaineering,  attended  by  troops  of  servants 
and  squadrons  of  horses,  threading  the  high  forests,  ex 
ploring  deep  mines,  crossing  Alpine  passes,  and  feasting 
on  the  borders  of  icy  lakes — always  with  the  faithful 
"Nomad,"  the  General's  private  Pullman  car,  waiting  in 
the  offing  ready  in  case  of  accident — and  then,  at  last,  after 
riding  through  Slumgullion  Gulch  back  to  Wagon  Wheel, 
Zulime  and  I  took  leave  of  these  good  friends  and  started 
toward  Arizona.  I  had  not  yet  displayed  to  her  the  Grand 
Canon  of  the  Colorado! 

Five  years  before,  on  a  stage  drawn  by  four  wild-eyed 
bronchos  I  had  ridden  from  Flagstaff  to  Hance's  Cabin  in 
the  glorious,  exultant  old-time  fashion,  but  now  a  train 
ran  from  Williams  to  the  edge  of  the  abyss,  and  while  I 
mourned  over  the  prosaic  change,  I  think  Zulime  welcomed 
it,  and  when  we  had  set  up  our  little  tent  on  a  point  of 
the  rim  which  commanded  a  view  (toward  the  Southwest) 
of  miles  and  miles  of  purple  pagodas,  violet  towers  and 
golden  peaks  we  were  content.  Nothing  could  change  the 
illimitable  majesty  of  this  view. 

Day  by  day  we  watched  the  colorful  play  of  sun-light  and 
shadow  along  those  mighty  walls,  and  one  night  we  camped 
in  the  deeps,  a  dramatic  experience,  for  a  mountain  lion 
yowling  from  the  cliffs  gave  voice  to  the  savage  grandeur  of 
the  scene.  Then  at  last,  surfeited  with  splendor,  weary 
with  magnificence,  we  turned  our  faces  homeward.  With 
only  a  stop  at  Laguna  to  watch  the  Indian  Corn  Dance, 
we  slid  down  to  Kansas  City  and  at  last  to  West  Salem 
and  home. 

235 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

What  a  vacation  it  had  been!  Pike's  Peak,  Cripple 
Creek,  Glen  Eyrie,  our  camp  beside  the  singing  stream  at 
Baldy,  Sierra  Blanca,  Wagon  Wheel  Gap,  Creede,  Red 
Mountain,  Lake  City,  Slumgullion,  Tennessee  Pass,  noble 
dinners  on  the  car,  trail-side  lunches  of  goose-liver  and 
sandwiches  and  jam,  iced  watermelon  and  champagne  in 
hot  camps  on  the  mesas— all  these  scenes  and  experiences 
came  back  accompanied  by  memories  of  the  good  talk,  the 
cosmopolitan  humor,  of  the  Palmers  and  their  guests. 

From  this  royal  ease,  this  incessant  shift  of  scene  and 
personality,  we  returned  to  our  shabby  old  homestead  brood 
ing  patiently  beneath  its  maples,  reflecting  upon  the  glit 
tering  panorama  which  our  magic  lamp  and  flying  carpet 
had  wrought  so  potently  to  display.  As  I  had  started  out 
to  educate  my  wife  in  Western  Life,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  this  summer  had  been  singularly  successful  in  bringing 
to  her  a  knowledge  of  the  splendors  of  Colorado  and  a 
perception  of  the  varied  character  of  its  population. — Best 
of  all  she  returned  in  perfect  health  and  happy  as  a  girl. 

"This  being  married  to  a  poor  novelist  isn't  so  bad  after 
all,"  I  remarked  with  an  air  of  self-congratulation.  "True, 
our  rewards  come  without  reason,  but  they  sometimes 
rhyme  with  joy  and  pride." 

Strange  to  say,  I  got  nothing  out  of  this  summer,  in  a 
literary  way,  except  the  story  which  I  called  The  Steadfast 
Widow  Delaney,  a  conception  which  came  to  me  on  my 
solitary  ascent  of  Sierra  Blanca.  All  the  beauty  and  drama, 
all  the  humor  and  contrast  of  the  trip  with  the  Palmers, 
had  no  direct  fictional  value  to  me.  It  is  hard  to  explain 
why,  but  so  it  was.  I  did  not  so  much  as  write  a  poem 
based  on  that  gorgeous  experience. 


236 


CHAPTER  SIXTEEN 

The     White     House     Musicale 

THE  Homestead  on  the  day  of  our  return,  was  not  only 
a  violent  contrast  to  the  castle  in  Glen  Eyrie,  but  its 
eaves  were  dripping  with  water  and  its  rooms  damp  and 
musty.  It  was  sodden  with  loneliness.  Father  was  in 
Dakota  and  mother  was  away  never  to  return,  and  the 
situation  would  have  been  quite  disheartening  to  me  had 
it  not  been  for  Zulime  who  did  not  share  my  melancholy, 
or  if  she  did  she  concealed  it  under  that  smiling  stoicism 
which  she  derived  from  her  deeply  philosophic  father.  She 
pretended  to  be  glad  of  the  peace  of  our  plain  reality. 

Life  with  her  was  not  lacking  in  variety.  From  the 
splendors  of  Colorado  and  the  luxury  of  private  cars  and 
palatial  chambers,  she  now  dropped,  with  a  suddenness 
which  should  have  been  disconcerting,  to  the  level  of  scour 
ing  pots  and  cooking  her  own  meals.  It  was  several  days 
before  we  succeeded  in  finding  a  cook.  "This  is  what  it 
means  to  be  the  wife  of  an  unpopular  novelist,"  I  said  to  her. 

"I'm  not  complaining.     It's  fun,"  she  replied. 

The  house  was  soon  in  order  and  when  my  brother  ar 
rived  later  in  the  week,  she  greeted  him  with  the  composure 
of  a  leisured  hostess.  In  such  wise  she  met  every  demand 
upon  her. 

It  was  Franklin's  first  night  at  home  since  mother  went 
away,  and  I  labored  to  cheer  him  with  the  fiction  that  she 
was  "on  a  visit"  to  some  of  her  old  friends  and  would 
soon  return. 

237 


A   Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

The  Junior  as  I  called  him,  was  in  a  serious  mood  ior 
another  reason.  After  more  than  twelve  years  of  life  as  an 
actor,  he  had  decided  to  quit  the  stage,  something  the 
player  is  traditionally  supposed  to  be  incapable  of  doing, 
and  he  had  come  to  me  for  aid  and  encouragement.  "I 
have  a  good  opportunity  to  go  into  the  management  of  a 
rubber  plantation,"  he  explained,  "and  I'd  like  to  have  you 
buy  out  my  share  in  the  Homestead  in  order  to  give  me  a 
little  money  to  work  on." 

To  this  I  agreed,  although  I  had  grave  doubts  of  the 
rubber  business.  To  have  him  give  up  the  stage  I  con 
sidered  a  gain,  for  while  he  was  a  capable  player  of  middle- 
aged  character  parts,  I  saw  no  lasting  success  ahead  of  him 
—on  the  contrary  I  imagined  him  getting  into  a  more  and 
more  precarious  condition.  Nothing  is  more  hopeless  than 
an  elderly  actor  out  of  a  job  and  subject  to  the  curt  dis 
missals  of  contemptuous  managers.  Frank  had  always  been 
gayly  unconcerned  about  the  future  and  he  was  not  greatly 
troubled  now;  he  was  merely  desirous  of  a  fixed  home  and 
a  place  to  vote.  With  the  promise  of  my  cash  for  his 
share  of  the  Homestead,  and  my  support  in  his  Mexican 
venture,  he  cheered  up  markedly  and  went  away  almost 
as  carefree  as  a  boy. 

In  the  quiet  of  the  days  which  followed  I  worked  ,each 
morning,  sometimes  on  The  Steadfast  Widow  Delaney,  and 
sometimes  on  a  revision  of  the  novel  which  I  had  variously 
and  from  time  to  time  called  On  Special  Duty,  and  The 
Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop.  Having  been  accepted 
by  Lorimer,  this  story  was  about  to  be  printed  under  this 
latter  title  as  a  serial  in  the  Post. 

Each  afternoon  I  saddled  my  Klondike  horse  who  was 
in  need  of  exercise,  and  galloped  about  over  the  hills  for 
an  hour  or  two.  We  were  familiar  figures  by  this  time,  and 
the  farmers  when  they  saw  me  leaping  a  pasture  fence  or 

238 


The     White     House     Musicale 

climbing  a  hill,  would  smile  (I  assume  that  they  smiled), 
and  say,  there  goes  that  literary  cuss,  or  words  to  that 
general  effect.  I  took  a  boyish  delight  in  showing  that 
Ladrone  would  walk  a  log  or  leap  a  ditch  at  the  mere 
touch  of  my  heel. 

Occasionally  I  went  to  LaCrosse  with  Zulime  to  visit  our 
good  friends  the  Eastons,  and  it  was  on  one  of  these  visits 
that  I  had  my  first  long  ride  in  an  automobile.  In 
credible  as  it  may  seem  now,  there  were  very  few  motor 
cars  in  the  county  in  1901,  and  Easton's  machine  would 
excite  laughter  to-day.  It  was  dumpy  of  form  and  noisy 
and  uncertain  of  temper,  but  it  made  the  trip  to  Winona 
and  almost  home  again.  It  broke  down  helplessly  in  the 
last  mile,  a  treachery  which  caused  its  owner  the  deepest 
chagrin,  although  it  gave  me  the  final  touch  for  a  humorous 
story  of  our  outing,  a  sketch  which  I  sold  to  Harper's 
Weekly.  The  editor  had  a  fine  illustration  made  for  it, 
one  which  gave  further  force  to  my  description  of  the 
terrific  speed  with  which  we  whirled  through  the  land 
scape.  As  I  recall  it  we  rose  to  nearly  seventeen  miles  an 
hour! 

As  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  actually  began 
to  appear  in  The  Post,  I  became  sharply  concerned  with 
the  question  of  preparing  it  for  book  publication.  I  decided 
to  go  to  New  York  and  look  the  ground  over  very  carefully 
before  making  selection  of  another  publisher. 

My  life  in  the  Homestead  was  comfortable,  almost  too 
comfortable.  It  lacked  stimulus.  Riding  my  horse,  gath 
ering  hickory  nuts,  and  playing  tennis  or  "rummy,"  were 
all  very  well  in  their  way,  but  they  left  me  dissatisfied,  and 
after  the  cold  winds  began  to  blow  and  my  afternoons  were 
confined  to  the  house,  I  stagnated.  Like  Prudden,  Grinnell 
and  other  of  my  trailer  friends,  I  was  disposed  to  pitch 
my  winter  camp  somewhere  on  Manhattan  Island.  The 

239 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

Rocky  Mountains  for  four  months  in  summer  and  the  rest 
of  the  year  in  New  York  City  appeared  an  ideal  division 
of  my  life  for  a  western  novelist. 

I  had  some  reason  to  think  this  arrangement  was  also 
satisfactory  to  my  wife.  To  her  the  Wilderness  was  a 
strange  and  wonderful  place  in  which  to  try  her  powers 
of  endurance,  but  the  trail  had  none  of  the  charms  of 
association  which  it  possessed  for  me.  She  was  quite  ready 
to  accompany  me  to  the  city  although  she  professed  to  be 
content  with  Neshonoc.  She  was  entirely  urban  whereas 
I  was  an  absurd  mixture  of  pioneer  and  trailer,  fictionist 
and  farmer. 

We  left  West  Salem  in  late  October  and  in  less  than 
three  days  were  settled  in  the  little  hotel  in  Fifteenth  Street 
where  we  had  lived  during  two  previous  winters.  My  con 
fidence  in  my  new  novel  was  not  sufficient  to  warrant  me 
in  paying  more  than  twenty  dollars  per  week  for  our  little 
apartment,  and  as  for  Zulime — she  professed  to  wonder 
how  I  dared  to  pay  as  much  as  seventeen. 

One  by  one  and  two  by  two  our  faithful  friends  called, 
Burroughs,  Gilder,  Howells,  Marion  and  Edward  Mac- 
Dowell,  the  Pages,  Juliet  Tompkins — no  one  appeared  to 
think  ill  of  us  because  we  returned  to  our  shabby  little 
suite.  We  dined  at  Katherine  Herne's,  finding  James  A., 
"away,"  and  with  Frank  Norris  and  his  wife  who  were 
(like  ourselves),  just  beginning  to  feel  a  little  more  secure 
of  a  living,  while  from  Seton  and  Bacheller  who  were  passing 
from  glory  to  glory,  we  had  kindly  invitations  to  visit  their 
new  houses,  for  both  of  them  were  building,  Bacheller  at 
Sound  Beach  and  Seton  at  Coscob. 

Seton  admitted  to  me  that  he  had  already  acquired  five 
times  the  amount  he  had  once  named  as  the  summit  of  his 
hopes,  and  Bacheller  awed  me  by  the  quiet  ease  of  his  way 
of  life.  In  the  opulent  presence  of  these  men,  I  sang  a  very 

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The     White     House     Musicale 

meek  and  slender  song.  I  hated  to  admit  my  poverty,  but 
what  was  the  use  of  making  any  concealment? 

It  remains  to  say  that  neither  Bacheller  nor  Seton  ex 
pressed  in  the  slightest  degree  the  sense  of  superiority  which 
their  larger  royalties  might  have  warranted.  I  am  quite  sure 
they  never  went  so  far  as  to  feel  sorry  for  me  although 
they  very  naturally  rejoiced  in  their  own  triumphant  pro 
gress.  In  some  ways  I  envied  them,  but  I  begrudged 
them  nothing. 

It  chanced  that  the  Setons  were  far  enough  along  with 
their  building  to  announce  a  House  Warming,  and  on  New 
Year's  Day,  Zulime  and  I  were  fortunate  enough  to  be  in 
cluded  in  the  list  of  their  guests.  On  the  Saturday  train 
we  found  Lloyd  Osbourne,  Richard  Le  Gallienne  and  sev 
eral  others  whom  we  knew  and  on  arrival  at  the  new  house 
on  its  rocky  ledge  above  the  lake,  we  found  that  the  party 
also  included  Mary  Fanton,  Carl  Lumholz,  Emery  Pottle 
and  Gertrude  Lynch. 

Seton  and  I  spent  part  of  the  afternoon  fixing  up  a  teepee 
which  we  constructed  out  of  an  old  Sibley  tent,  while  the 
other  guests  skated  on  the  pond.  What  a  dinner  we 
enjoyed  that  night!  What  youthful  spirits  we  brought 
to  it!  Afterward  we  sang  and  danced — we  all  danced,  even 
Zulime  danced  for  the  first  time  in  her  life — so  she  said. 

No  one  had  gray  hair,  no  one  doubted  the  future,  no 
one  acknowledged  impending  cloud.  We  toasted  the  longev 
ity  of  "Wyndygoul"  and  the  continued  success  of  its 
builder.  We  pledged  eternal  allegiance  to  our  hostess,  and 
so  without  a  care  of  the  future,  watched  the  New  Year 
dawn. 

At  two  in  the  morning  when  I  crept  away  to  my  bed,  the 
tom-tom  and  the  piano  were  both  sounding  out  with  almost 
undiminished  vigor.  It  was  a  night  to  remember  and  I 
do  remember  it  with  the  pleasure  an  old  man  has  in  the  days 

241 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

of  his  early  manhood — not  so  very  early  either  for  I  was  on 
the  hither  side  of  forty! 

Upon  our  return  to  the  city  I  found  a  letter  from  Bok 
with  a  check  for  eight  hundred  dollars  in  it.  This  was  in 
response  to  a  note  of  mine  respecting  an  offer  of  seven 
hundred  and  fifty.  "Better  make  it  eight  hundred,"  I 
wrote,  and  so,  in  my  triumph,  I  led  Zulime  to  Vantine's 
and  there  purchased  for  her  a  carved  gold  ring  set  with 
three  rose  diamonds,  the  handsomest  present  I  had  ever 
dared  to  buy  for  her.  "This  is  to  make  amends  for  the 
measly  little  engagement  ring  you  were  forced  to  accept," 
I  remarked  by  way  of  explanation. 

She  protested  at  my  reckless  waste  of  money  (as  she  had 
done  with  regard  to  the  brown  cloak),  but  to  no  avail, 
and  thereafter  if  she  occasionally  brought  the  conversation 
round  to  Oriental  jewelry,  I  am  sure  she  is  not  to  be  blamed. 
She  is  still  wearing  that  ring,  though  she  no  longer  finds  the 
same  girlish  pleasure  in  displaying  it. 

The  actual  making  of  my  serial  into  book  form  began  soon 
after  New  Years,  for  I  find  records  of  my  contract  with 
Harper  and  Bros.,  and  the  arrival  of  bundles  of  proof.  By 
the  end  of  February  the  book  was  substantially  made  and 
ready  for  distribution,  and  a  handsome  book  it  was — to 
me.  Whatever  it  had  started  out  to  be,  it  had  ended  as  a 
fictional  study  of  the  red  man  in  his  attempt  to  walk  the 
white  man's  road,  and  as  a  concept  of  his  tragic  outlook 
I  still  think  it  worth  while. 

The  three  men  in  control  of  the  reorganized  firm  of 
Harper  and  Bros.,  George  Harvey,  Frederick  Duneka  and 
Frank  Leigh,  all  professed  a  firm  belief  in  The  Captain  of 
the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  and  promised  me  such  a  boost  as  I 
had  never  had.  This  promise  they  set  about  to  fulfill. 

As  the  day  of  publication  came  on  they  took  generous 
squares  of  space  in  the  daily  papers,  and  whole  pages  in 

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The     White     House     Musicale 

the  magazines.  They  astonished  and  somewhat  daunted 
me  by  putting  an  almost  life-size  portrait  on  the  bill  boards 
of  all  the  elevated  roads,  and  then  to  the  consternation  of 
my  wife,  The  Weekly  published  a  full  page  reproduction 
of  her  photograph,  a  portrait  which  they  had  obtained  from 
me  to  use,  as  I  supposed,  in  the  ordinary  way  in  the 
literary  column  of  the  Sunday  papers.  I  had  no  idea  of  its 
being  a  full  page  illustration.  I  was  troubled  and  uneasy 
about  this  for  a  day  or  two,  but  realizing  that  the  firm  was 
doing  its  best  to  make  my  book  known  to  the  public,  I 
could  not  with  justice  complain.  In  truth  the  use  of  the 
portrait  seemed  not  to  make  any  difference  one  way  or  the 
other.  It  certainly  did  Zulime  no  harm. 

At  my  request  the  firm  made  up  a  very  handsome  special 
copy  of  the  novel  which  I  sent  to  President  Roosevelt, 
with  a  word  of  explanation  concerning  the  purpose  which 
underlaid  the  writing  of  the  tale. 

Early  in  March  the  book  appeared  with  everything  in 
its  favor.  True  there  was  opportunity  for  controversy  in 
its  delineation  of  aggressive  cattlemen,  but  those  who  had 
so  bitterly  criticized  my  pictures  of  the  prairie  life  in  Main 
Traveled  Roads,  were  off  their  guard  with  respect  of  the 
mountains.  My  reviewers  quite  generally  accepted  the 
novel  as  a  truthful  presentation  of  life  on  an  Indian  reser 
vation  in  the  nineties.  Furthermore  my  sympathetic  in 
terpretation  of  the  Army's  attitude  toward  the  red  men 
caused  the  story  to  be  quite  generally  commended  by  the 
officers.  This  surprised  and  delighted  me,  but  I  was  espe 
cially  gratified  by  Roosevelt's  hearty  praise  of  it.  "It  is 
your  best  work  so  far,"  he  wrote  me,  "and  I  am  in  full 
sympathy  with  your  position." 

Requests  for  stories,  interviews,  articles  and  biographical 
notes,  flowed  in  upon  me.  It  really  looked  like  a  late 
second  arrival  of  Hamlin  Garland.  Not  since  the  excitement 

243 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

of  putting  Main  Traveled  Roads  on  the  market  had  I  been 
so  hopeful  and  in  the  midst  of  my  other  honors  came  a 
note  from  the  President,  inviting  me  to  visit  him,  and 
with  it  a  card  to  a  musicale  at  the  White  House. 

Life  in  the  East  as  the  reader  can  see,  was  very  alluring 
to  Zulime  as  well  as  to  me,  and  though  as  April  came  on, 
we  both  felt  the  call  of  the  West,  I  am  not  sure  whether 
we  would  have  wrought  our  courage  to  the  point  of  de 
serting  our  little  apartment  on  Fifteenth  Street,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  President's  invitation,  which  was  in  effect 
a  command,  an  honor  as  well  as  a  pleasure,  which  we  did 
not  think  of  disregarding. 

As  I  had  not  voted  the  Republican  ticket  and  had  no 
political  standing  with  the  Administration,  ttyiss  invitation 
was  personal.  It  came  from  Roosevelt  as  a^Jjfiend  and 
fellow-trailer — a  fact  which  enhanced  its  valme^^o.me.  We 
began  at  once  to  prta^our  return  to  Chicago  in 'such  wise 
that  it  would  include  a  week  in  Washington,  which  we  had 
not  visited  since  our  wedding  journey. 

It  must  have  been  about  this  time  that  the  Annual  Meet 
ing  of  the  Institute  took  place.  I  recall  Howells  presiding 
with  timidity  and  very  evident  embarrassment  when  it  came 
to  the  duty  of  putting  certain  resolutions  to  vote.  He 
seemed  sad  and  old  that  night — indeed  as  I  looked  around 
the  table,  I  was  startled  to  find  how  many  of  the  men 
I  had  considered  "among  the  younger  writers"  were  gray 
and  haggard.  Mabie,  Page,  Hopkinson  Smith,  Gilder  and 
Stedman — all  were  older  than  I  had  remembered  them.  Ed 
ward  MacDowell,  who  was  sitting  beside  me,  remarked 
upon  the  change,  and  I  replied,  "Yes,  you  and  I  are  young 
only  by  contrast.  To  Frank  Norris  and  Stewart  White, 
we  are  already  veterans." 

[That  was  twenty  years  ago,  and  I  am  three  score  years 
and  more,  and  most  of  those  who  dined  with  me  that  night 

244 


The     White     House     Musicale 

are  in  their  graves,  only  Page,  of  all  the  group,  is  left. 
Another  generation  altogether  is  on  the  stage  whilst  I  and 
Stewart  White  are  grouped  together  as  "older  men."  I 
am  seeing  literary  history  made  whether  I  am  credited  with 
making  any  of  it,  myself,  or  not.  At  times  I  have  an  ap 
palling  sense  of  the  onward  sweep  of  the  years.  Are  they 
carrying  us  to  higher  grounds  in  fiction  and  in  other  arts, 
or  are  they  descending  to  lower  levels  of  motive  and  work 
manship? 

It  was  glorious  spring  when  we  reached  Washington,  and 
in  the  glow  of  my  momentary  sense  of  triumph  we  went 
to  one  of  the  best  hotels  and  enjoyed  for  the  moment  the 
sense  of  being  successful  and  luxurious  folk. 

In  calling  on  the  President  the  following  day  I  was  a 
little  taken  aback  by  his  frankness  in  speaking  of  my 
changing  point  of  view.  "You  have  pictured  the  reverse 
side  of  the  pioneer,"  he  said  with  a  gleam  of  mischief  in 
his  eyes,  "In  your  study  of  the  Indian's  case  you  have  dis 
covered  the  fact  that  the  borderer  is  often  the  aggressor 
and  sometimes  the  thief."  He  repeated  his  praise  of  the 
book  and  then  said.  "I  shall  make  use  of  your  knowledge 
of  the  conditions  on  the  Western  reservations.  You  and 
George  Bird  Grinnell  know  what  is  going  on  out  there  and 
I  intend  to  use  you  both — unofficially." 

To  this  I  agreed,  and  when  he  gave  me  a  card  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Interior  and  told  me  to  take  up  with 
the  Commissioner  certain  reforms  which  I  had  suggested,  I 
put  the  card  in  my  pocket  and  set  about  the  task.  It  was 
only  a  small  card,  a  visiting  card,  and  when,  in  my  ignorance 
of  official  life,  I  walked  in  on  the  Secretary  with  that  tiny 
slip  of  pasteboard  in  my  hand,  I  had  no  idea  of  its  explo 
sive  power.  The  Secretary  who  was  lounging  at  his  desk 
like  a  tired  and  discouraged  old  man,  did  not  think  me 

245 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

important  enough  to  warrant  a  rise  out  of  his  chair,  until 
he  read  the  card  which  I  handed  to  him.  After  that  I 
owned  the  office!  That  card  made  me  the  personal  repre 
sentative  of  the  President — for  the  moment. 

On  the  following  day  Roosevelt  allowed  me  to  sit  in  at 
some  uf  the  meetings  in  the  Executive  Chamber,  and  it 
was  at  one  of  these  that  I  met  for  the  first  time  the  most 
engaging  Chief  of  the  Forestry  Bureau,  Gifford  Pinchot. 
At  night  Zulime  and  I  dined  with  William  Dudley  Foulke 
and  at  nine  o'clock  we  went  to  the  White  House  Musicale. 

That  musicale  at  the  White  House  is  one  of  the  starry 
nights  in  Zulime's  life,  as  well  as  in  my  own,  for  not  only 
did  we  meet  the  President  and  Mrs.  Roosevelt  and  many 
of  the  best  known  figures  in  American  art,  letters,  politics, 
and  statesmanship,  we  also  heard  Paderewski  play  as  we 
had  never  heard  him  play  before. 

We  were  seated  close  to  the  piano  and  when  that  potent, 
shock-haired  Pole  spread  his  great  hands  above  the  keys 
I  fancied  something  of  the  tiger  in  the  lithe  grace  of  his 
body,  and  in  his  face  a  singular  and  sultry  solemnity  was 
expressed.  Inspired  no  doubt  by  the  realization  that  he 
was  playing  before  a  mighty  ruler — a  ruler  by  the  divine 
right  of  brain  power, — he  played  with  magnetic  intensity. 
Something  mysterious,  something  grandly  moving  went 
out  from  his  fingers.  No  other  living  musician  could,  at 
that  moment  have  equaled  him. 

For  a  few  hours  Zulime  and  I  enjoyed  the  white  light 
which  beat  upon  two  of  the  great  personalities  of  that 
day — one  the  world's  greatest  piano  player,  the  other  the 
most  powerful  and  the  most  popular  man  in  all  America — 
and  when  we  retired  to  the  obscurity  of  our  hotel  we  were 
silent  with  satisfaction.  For  the  moment  it  seemed  that 
fortune  was  about  to  empty  her  golden  horn  at  my  feet. 
I  was  happily  married,  my  latest  book  was  a  hit,  and  I 
had  the  friendship  and  the  favor  of  the  President. 

246 


CHAPTER  SEVENTEEN 

Signs    of    Change 

AS  a  matter  of  record,  and  for  the  benefit  of  young 
readers  who  may  be  contemplating  authorship,  I  here 
set  down  the  fact  that  notwithstanding  my  increasing  roy 
alties,  my  gross  income  for  1901  was  precisely  $3,100. 
Out  of  this  we  -saved  five  hundred  dollars.  Neither  my 
wife  nor  I  had  any  great  hopes  of  the  future.  Neither  of 
us  felt  justified  in  any  unusual  expenditures,  and  as  for 
speculation — nothing  could  induce  me  to  buy  a  share  of 
stock — or  even  a  bond  (gilt-edged  or  otherwise),  for  I 
owned  a  prejudice,  my  father's  prejudice,  against  all  forms 
of  intangible  wealth.  Evidences  of  wealth  did  not  appeal 
to  me.  I  wanted  the  real  thing,  I  wanted  the  earth.  Noth 
ing  but  land  gave  me  the  needed  sense  of  security. 

In  my  most  exalted  moments  I  began  to  dream  of  using 
my  income  from  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop 
in  the  purchase  of  more  Oklahoma  land.  In  imagination  I 
saw  myself  in  a  wide-rimmed  hat  and  white  linen  suit  sitting 
at  ease  on  the  porch  of  a  broad-roofed  house  (built  in  the 
Mexican  style  with  a  patio)  looking  out  over  my  thousand 
acres — I  had  decided  to  have  just  a  thousand  acres,  it 
made  such  a  mouth-filling  announcement  to  one's  friends. 

I  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  think  of  a  life  without  labor 
(I  expected  to  work  in  the  North  till  February,  then  rest 
and  ride  horse-back  for  three  months  in  the  South),  but 
I  did  hope  to  relieve  Zulime  of  some  of  her  drudgery.  Now 
that  I  think  back  to  it,  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  my  wife 
rejoiced  over  my  plan  to  go  to  Weatherford  to  purchase 

247 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

another  farm.  It  is  probable  that  I  overcame  her  objections 
by  telling  her  that  I  wanted  more  material  for  my  book 
of  Indian  tales;  anyhow  I  left  her  in  Chicago  almost  as  soon 
as  we  arrived  there,  and  went  again  to  Darlington  and 
Colony  to  see  Major  Stouch  and  John  Seger,  and  to  make 
certain  observations  for  President  Roosevelt. 

Seger,  unskilled  as  he  was  with  the  pen,  could  talk  with 
humor  and  pictorial  quality,  and  some  of  his  stories  had 
so  stimulated  my  imagination  that  I  was  eager  to  have 
more  time  with  him  among  his  wards.  Without  precisely 
following  his  narratives  I  had  found  myself  able  to  repro 
duce  the  spirit  of  them  in  my  own  diction.  His  ability 
as  a  sign-talker  was  of  especial  service  to  me  for,  as  he  signed 
to  his  visitors,  he  muttered  aloud,  for  my  benefit,  what  he 
was  expressing  in  gesture,  and  also  what  the  red  man 
signed  in  reply.  In  this  way  I  got  at  the  psychology  of 
the  Cheyenne  to  a  degree  which  I  could  not  possibly  com 
pass  through  an  interpreter. 

While  looking  for  farms  during  the  day,  I  drew  from  Seger 
night  by  night,  the  amazing  story  of  his  career  among  the 
Southern  Cheyennes.  It  was  a  rough  and  disjointed  narra 
tive,  but  it  was  stirring  and  valuable  as  authentic  record 
of  the  Southwest.  "The  Red  Pioneer,"  "Lone  Wolf's  Old 
Guard,"  and  many  more  of  my  tales  of  red  people  were 
secured  on  this  trip.  Several  dealing  with  the  Blackfeet 
and  Northern  Cheyennes,  like  "the  Faith  of  His  Fathers" 
and  "White  Weasel"  I  gained  from  Stouch.  None  of  them 
are  true  in  the  sense  of  being  precisely  the  way  they  were 
told,  for  I  took  very  few  notes.  They  are  rather  free  tran 
scripts  of  the  incidents  which  chanced  to  follow  my  liking — 
but  they  reflect  the  spirit  of  the  original  narratives  and 
are  bound  together  by  one  underlying  motive  which  is  to 
show  the  Indian  as  a  human  being,  a  neighbor.  "We  have 
had  plenty  of  the  'wily  redskin'  kind  of  thing,"  I  said  to 

248 


Signs     of     Change 

Stouch.  "I  am  going  to  tell  of  the  red  man  as  you  and 
Seger  have  known  him,  as  a  man  of  the  polished  stone  age 
trying  to  adapt  himself  to  steam  and  electricity." 

It  happened  that  plenteous  rains  had  made  Oklahoma 
very  green  and  beautiful,  and  as  I  galloped  about  over  the 
wide  swells  of  the  Caddo  country,  I  was  disposed  to  buy 
all  the  land  that  joined  me.  Imagining  myself  the  lord 
of  a  thousand  acres,  I  achieved  a  profound  joy  of  living. 
It  was  good  to  glow  in  the  sunlight,  to  face  the  sweet 
southern  wind,  and  to  feel  once  more  beneath  my  knees 
the  swelling  muscles  of  a  powerful  horse.  In  a  very  vivid 
sense  I  relived  the  days  when,  as  a  lad  of  twelve,  I  rode 
with  Burton  and  my  sister  Harriet  along  the  prairie  swells 
of  the  Cedar  Valley  some  thirty  years  before.  "Washitay," 
at  such  moments  was  not  only  the  land  of  the  past  but 
the  hope  of  the  future. 

My  red  neighbors  interested  me.  The  whole  problem 
of  their  future  was  being  worked  out  almost  within  sight 
of  my  door.  Here  the  men  of  the  Polished  Stone  Age  and 
the  men  of  gasoline  engines  and  electrical  telephones  met 
and  mingled  in  a  daily  adjustment  which  offered  material 
of  surpassing  value  to  the  novelist  who  could  use  it.  Humor 
and  pathos,  tragic  bitterness  and  religious  exaltation  were 
all  within  reach  of  my  hand. 

The  spring  nights  which  came  to  me  there  at  Colony  were 
of  a  quality  quite  new  to  me.  The  breeze,  amiable  and 
moist,  was  Southern,  and  the  moonlight  falling  from  the 
sky  like  a  silent,  all-enveloping  cataract  of  silver,  lay  along 
the  ground  so  mystically  real  that  I  could  feel  it  with  my 
hand.  The  air  was  at  once  tropic  and  Western,  and  this 
subtle  blending  of  the  North  and  the  South,  the  strange 
and  the  familiar,  appealed  to  me  with  such  power  that  I 
wrote  Zulime  a  statement  of  my  belief  that  in  becoming  a 
part-owner  in  this  land,  I  had  assured  for  us  both  a  happy 

249 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

and  prosperous  future.  "I  shall  come  here  every  spring," 
I  declared,  and  in  the  glow  of  this  enthusiasm,  I  purchased 
another  farm  of  two  hundred  and  forty  acres  and  arranged 
with  Seger  for  its  management. 

Alas,  for  my  piece  of  mind!  On  my  way  homeward, 
at  Reno,  I  encountered  a  simoon  of  most  appalling  power. 
An  equatorial  wind  which  pressed  against  the  car  and 
screamed  at  the  window — a  hot,  unending  pitiless  blast 
withering  the  grain  and  tearing  the  heart  out  of  young  gar 
dens — a  storm  which  brought  back  to  me  the  dreadful 
blizzard  of  dust  which  swept  over  our  Iowa  farm  in  the 
spring  of  '72.  There  was  something  grand  as  well  as 
sorrowful  in  this  unexpected  display  of  desert  ferocity. 

My  dream  of  a  thousand-acre  ranch  shriveled  with  the 
plants.  The  prairie  abandoning  its  youthful,  buoyant  air, 
took  on  a  sinister  and  savage  grandeur.  To  escape  from 
the  ashes  of  these  ruined  fields  was  now  a  passionate  desire. 
The  value  of  my  lard  in  Washitay  fell  almost  to  the  vanish 
ing  point.  Illinois  became  a  green  and  pleasant  pasture 
toward  which  I  drove  with  gratitude  and  relief. 

[I  insert  a  line  to  say  that  this  was  only  a  mood.  I 
went  on  with  my  purchase  of  lands  till  I  had  my  thousand 
acres,  but  these  acres  were  in  scattered  plots  and  the  house 
with  the  patio  and  the  porch  was  never  built.] 

At  the  Agency  just  before  I  left  for  the  North  I  had 
hired  some  Cheyenne  women  to  make  for  me  a  large  council 
teepee  which  I  had  in  mind  to  set  up  as  my  dwelling  at 
Eagle's  Nest  Camp,  where  Zulime  and  I  had  agreed  to 
spend  the  summer.  Boyishly  eager  to  reproduce  as  well 
as  I  could  a  Cheyenne  house,  I  assembled  all  my  blankets, 
parfleches,  willow  beds  and  other  furnishings  and  raised 
my  lodge  on  poles  on  the  edge  of  the  wood  just  inside  the 
Camp's  entrance. 

It  made  a  singularly  appropriate  addition  to  the  reserva- 

250 


Signs     of     Change 

tion,  to  my  thinking,  at  least,  and  I  took  inordinate  pride 
in  its  ownership.  Trim  and  white  and  graceful  it  stood 
against  the  forest  wall,  its  crossed  poles  sprangling  from 
its  top  with  poetic  suggestion  of  aboriginal  life,  and  when, 
with  elaborate  ceremony,  I  laid  the  fuel  for  its  first  fire, 
calling  upon  our  patron,  Wallace  Heckman,  to  touch  a  match 
to  the  tinder,  I  experienced  a  sense  of  satisfaction. 

To  my  artist  friends  it  was  a  "picturesque  accessory"- 
to  me  it  was  a  talisman  of  things  passing.  The  smoke  of 
the  hickory  faggots  filling  that  conical  roof-tree  brought 
back  to  me  a  cloud  of  memories  of  the  prairies  of  the  Sioux, 
the  lakes  of  the  Chippewa,  and  the  hills  of  the  Cheyenne. 
Thin  as  were  its  walls,  they  shut  out  (for  me)  the  com 
monplace  present,  helping  me  to  reconstruct  the  world  of 
Blackhawk  and  the  Sitting  Bull,  and  when  I  walked  past 
it,  especially  at  night,  my  mind  took  joy  in  its  form,  and  a 
pleasant  stir  within  my  blood  made  manifest  of  its  power. 

Browne  acknowledged  its  charm  and  painted  a  moonlight 
sketch  of  it,  and  Seton,  who  came  by  one  day,  helped  me 
dedicate  its  firehole.  In  the  light  of  its  embers,  he  and 
I  renewed  our  youth  while  smoking  the  beautiful  Pipe  of 
Meditation,  which  a  young  Cheyenne  chief  had  given  me 
in  token  of  his  friendship. 

It  happened  that  I  was  scheduled  to  give  a  series  of 
lectures  at  the  University  of  Chicago  on  The  Outdoor 
Literature  of  America,  and  with  a  delightful  feeling  of 
propriety  in  the  fact  I  set  to  work  to  write  these  ad 
dresses  in  my  canvas  lodge,  surrounded  by  all  its  primitive 
furnishings.  It  made  an  admirable  study,  but  at  night  as 
I  lay  on  my  willow  couch,  I  found  the  moonlight  so  intense 
and  the  converging  lines  of  the  lodge  poles  so  suggestive  of 
other  folk  and  other  times  that  slumber  was  fitful.  The 
wistful  ghosts  of  Blackhawk  and  his  kind  seemed  all  about 
me.  Not  till  the  moon  set  or  the  shadows  of  the  forest 

251 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

covered    me,    was    I    able    to    compose    myself    to   sleep. 

For  several  weeks  I  wrote  at  ease  upon  my  theme  and 
then,  into  the  carefree  atmosphere  of  my  Lodge  of  Dreams 
came  the  melancholy  news  that  William  McClintock,  my 
giant  uncle,  had  been  stricken  by  the  same  mysterious 
malady  which  had  broken  my  mother's  heart,  and  that  he 
was  lying  motionless  on  his  bed  in  the  narrow  space  of  his 
chamber.  The  "stroke"  (so  my  aunt  wrote)  had  come 
upon  him  (as  upon  my  mother)  without  the  slightest 
warning,  and  with  no  discoverable  cause. 

On  my  return  to  the  Homestead  I  went  at  once  to  see 
him.  He  was  sitting  in  my  mother's  wheeled  chair,  quite 
helpless,  yet  cheerful  and  confident  of  ultimate  recovery. 
He  had  always  been  a  man  of  dignity,  and  singularly  ab 
stemious  of  habit,  and  these  qualities  were  strongly  accen 
tuated  by  his  sudden  helplessness.  He  was  very  gentle, 
very  patient,  and  the  sight  of  him  lying  there  made  speaking 
very  difficult  for  me. 

When  the  doctor  would  permit,  he  loved  to  lie  in  his  chair 
on  the  porch  of  his  little  cottage  where  he  could  look  out 
upon  the  hills,  his  eyes  reflecting  his  beloved  landscape 
like  those  of  a  dreaming  cage-weary  lion.  Inarticulate, 
like  my  mother,  he  was  nevertheless  the  poet,  and  never 
failed  to  respond — at  least  with  a  meaning  glance — to 
any  imaginative  word  in  my  discourse. 

How  much  he  had  meant  to  me  in  all  the  days  of  my  boy 
hood!  As  the  master  of  the  threshing  machine  forty  years 
agone,  he  had  filled  my  childish  heart  with  worship.  As 
the  swift-footed  deer  trailer,  the  patient  bee-hunter,  the 
silent  lover  of  the  forest,  he  had  held  my  regard  and  though 
he  had  never  quite  risen  to  the  high  place  which  my  Uncle 
David  occupied  in  my  boyhood's  worship,  he  had  always 
been  to  me  a  picturesque  and  kindly  figure.  Year  by  year 
I  had  watched  his  giant  form  stoop,  and  his  black  beard  wax 

252 


Signs     of     Change 

thin  and  white,  and  now,  here  he  sat  almost  at  the  end 
of  his  trail,  unable  to  move,  yet  expressing  a  kind  of 
elemental  bravery,  a  philosophic  patience  which  moved  me 
as  no  words  of  lamentation  could  have  done. 

Strange  malady!  He  who  had  never  met  his  match  in 
stark  strength  could  not  now  by  the  exercise  of  all  his 
will,  lift  that  limp  arm  from  his  side  and  as  I  sat  beside  him 
I  recalled  my  last  sad  meeting  with  Major  Powell,  the 
man  who  first  guided  a  canoe  through  the  Grand  Canon  of 
the  Colorado,  and  in  my  mind  arose  a  conception  of  what 
these  two  men,  each  in  his  kind  represented  in  the  story 
of  American  pioneering.  One  the  far-famed  explorer,  the 
other  the  unknown  rifleman  behind  the  plow.  With  Wil 
liam  McClintock — with  my  father,  with  Major  Powell,  a 
whole  world,  a  splendid  and  heroic  world  was  passing  never 
to  return,  and  when  I  took  my  uncle's  hand  in  parting 
I  was  almost  certain  that  I  should  never  see  him  again. 


Once  he  was  king  of  forest  men. 

To  him  a  snow-capped  mountain  range 

Was  but  a  line,  a  place  of  mark, 

A  view-point  on  the  trail.    Then 

He  had  no  dread  of  dark, 

No  fear  of  change. 

Now  an  uprolled  rug  upon  the  floor 

Appalls  his  feet.     His  withered  arm 

Shakes  at  the  menace  of  a  door, 

And  every  wind-waft  does  him  harm. 


God !     'Tis  a  piteous  thing  to  see 
This  ranger  of  the  hills  confined 
To  the  small  compass  of  his  room 
Like  a  chained  eagle  on  a  tree, 
Lax-winged  and  gray  and  blind. 
Only  in  dreams  he  sees  the  bloom 
On  far  hills  where  the  red  deer  run, 

253 


A  Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

Only  in  memory  guides  the  light  canoe 

Or  stalks  the  bear  with  dog  and  polished  gun. 


In  him  behold  the  story  of  the  West, 

The  chronicle  of  rifleman  behind  the  plow, 

Typing  the  life  of  those  who  knew 

No  barrier  but  the  sunset  in  their  quest. 

On  his  bent  head  and  grizzled  hair 

Is  set  the  crown  of  those  who  shew 

New  cunning  to  the  wolf,  new  courage  to  the  bear. 


Another  evidence  of  melancholy  change  came  to  me  in 
the  failing  powers  of  Ladrone,  my  mountain  horse,  who 
had  come  through  the  winter  very  badly.  I  found  him 
standing  in  the  pasture,  weak  and  inactive,  taking  no  in 
terest  in  the  rich  grasses  under  his  feet.  In  the  belief  that 
exercise  would  do  him  good,  I  saddled  him  and  started  to 
ride  about  the  square,  but  soon  drew  rein.  He  had  not  the 
strength  to  carry  me! 

Sadly  dismounting  I  led  him  back  to  the  stable.  It  was 
evident  that  he  would  never  again  career  with  me  across 
the  hills.  Bowed  and  dejected  he  resumed  his  place  in 
the  paddock.  Standing  thus,  with  hanging  head,  he  ap 
peared  to  be  dreaming  of  the  days  when  as  a  part  of  the 
round-up,  in  the  far  Northwest,  he  had  carried  his  master 
over  the  range  and  through  the  herd  with  joyous  zeal.  Each 
time  I  looked  at  him  I  felt  a  twinge  of  pain. 

Everything  I  could  do  for  him  was  done,  every  remedial 
measure  was  tried,  but  he  grew  steadily  worse,  and  at  last, 
I  called  a  neighbor  to  my  aid  and  said,  "Oliver,  my  horse 
is  very  sick.  I  fear  his  days  are  numbered.  Study  him, 
do  what  you  can  for  him,  and  if  you  find  he  cannot  be 
cured,  put  him  away.  Don't  tell  me  when  it  is  done  or 
how  it  is  done — I  don't  want  to  know.  You  understand?" 

He  understood,  and  one  morning,  a  few  days  later,  as  I 

254 


Signs     of     Change 

looked  in  the  pasture  for  the  gray  pony,  he  was  nowhere 
to  be  seen.  In  the  dust  of  the  driveway,  I  detected  the 
marks  of  his  small  feet.  The  toes  of  his  shoes  pointed  toward 
the  gate,  and  there  were  no  returning  foot-prints.  He  had 
gone  away  on  the  long  trail  which  leads  to  the  River  of 
Darkness  and  The  Wide  Lands  Beyond  It. 

His  bridle  and  saddle  were  hanging  in  the  barn  (they 
are  still  there),  silent  memorials  of  the  explorations  in 
which  he  and  I  had  played  a  resolute  part. 

Something  grips  me  by  the  throat  as  I  remember  his 
eyes, 

"Brown,  clear  and  calm,  with  color  down  deep, 
Where  his  brave,  proud  soul  seemed  to  lie." 

I  recall  the  first  days  we  spent  together,  beautiful  days 
in  the  Frazer  Valley,  when  jubilant  cranes  bugled  from  the 
skies,  and  humming  birds  moved  in  myriads  along  the  river's 
banks — memories  of  those  desperate  days  in  the  Skeena 
forests,  amid  dank  and  poisonous  plants — of  marches  on 
the  tundra  along  the  high  Stickeen  Divide — all  these  come 
back.  I  see  him  crowding  close  to  my  fire,  thin  and  weak. 

I  relive  once  more  that  bitter  night  on  the  wharf  in 
Glenora  when  (chilled  by  the  cold  wind),  he  first  began  to 
cough.  I  am  thinking  of  his  journey  on  the  boat  with  me 
to  Wrangell;  of  the  day  when  I  left  him  there  (the  only 
horse  on  the  coast);  of  my  return;  of  our  long  trip  to 
Seattle;  of  his  trust  in  me  as  he  faced  the  strange  monsters 
of  the  city;  of  his  long  dark  ride  to  St.  Paul;  of  the  joyous 
day  when  I  opened  his  prison  door  and  finding  him  safe  and 
well,  rode  him  forth  to  the  admiration  of  my  uncles  at  the 
county  fair.  A  vast  section  of  my  life  faded  with  the 
passing  of  that  small  gray  horse.  "Lost  my  Ladrone,  gone 
the  wild  living.  I  dream,  but  my  dreaming  is  vain." 

My  sense  of  uneasiness  was  deepened  by  another  warning, 

255 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

a  third  sign  of  decay.  One  morning  my  father  while  appar 
ently  in  his  usual  health,  suddenly  grew  dizzy  and  fell  and 
as  I  bent  above  him  he  gazed  up  at  me  with  an  expression 
which  I  had  never  before  seen  in  his  face,  a  humble,  helpless, 
appealing  look.  It  seemed  that  he  was  going  as  William 
had  gone. 

Happily  I  was  mistaken.  His  indomitable  soul  reas 
serted  itself.  He  refused  to  surrender.  He  rallied.  "I'm 
all  right,"  he  said  at  last,  a  grim  line  coming  back  into  his 
mouth.  "It's  passing  off.  I  can  move,"  and  lifting  his 
arm  he  opened  and  shut  his  hand  in  proof  of  it.  "I'm 
better  than  a  dozen  dead  men  yet." 

He  was  distinctly  stronger  next  day,  and  when,  looking 
from  my  window  I  saw  him  going  about  his  work  in  the 
garden,  bareheaded  as  was  his  habit,  resolute  and  unsub 
dued,  I  was  reassured,  but  never  again  did  he  move  with 
the  same  vigor  as  before.  For  the  first  time  he  acknowledged 
his  age. 

During  all  these  melancholy  experiences  so  significant  of 
the  dying  border,  I  had  the  comfort  of  my  undaunted  wife 
whose  happy  spirit  refused  to  be  clouded,  by  what  she  rec 
ognized  as  merely  the  natural  decay  of  the  preceding  gen 
eration.  Her  mind  was  set  on  the  future,  our  future.  She 
refused  to  yield  her  youthful  right  to  happiness,  and  under 
the  influence  of  her  serene  philosophy  I  went  back  to  my 
writing,  or  at  least  to  the  serious  consideration  of  another 
mountain  theme,  which  was  taking  shape  in  my  brain. 

With  a  mere  love-story  I  had  never  been  content.  For 
me  a  sociological  background  was  necessary  in  order  to 
make  fiction  worth  while,  and  I  was  minded  to  base  my 
next  novel  on  a  study  of  the  "war"  which  had  just  taken 
place,  at  Cripple  Creek,  between  the  Free  Miner,  the  Union 
Miner  and  the  Operator  or  Capitalist. 

The  suggestion  for  this  theme  had  come  to  me  during 

256 


S  igns     o  f     Change 

a  call  on  some  friends  in  New  York  City,  where  I  had  been 
amused  and  somewhat  embarrassed,  by  the  ecstatic  and  out 
spoken  admiration  of  a  boy  of  fourteen,  who  was  (as  his 
mother  put  it)  "quite  crazy  over  miners,  Indians  and 
cowboys.  His  dream  is  to  go  West  and  illustrate  your 
books,"  she  had  said  to  me. 

This  lad's  enthusiasm  for  the  West  and  his  ambition  to 
be  an  illustrator  of  western  stories  had  started  me  on  a 
tale  in  which  a  fine  but  rather  spoiled  New  York  girl  was 
to  be  carried  to  Colorado  by  the  enthusiasm  of  her  youthful 
brother,  and  there  plunged  (against  her  will)  into  the  war 
fare  of  mountaineers  and  miners,  a  turbulence  which  her 
beloved  brother  would  insist  on  sharing.  Such  a  girl  might 
conceivably  find  herself  in  the  storm  center  of  a  contest 
such  as  that  which  had  taken  place  on  Bull  Hill  in  the  late 
nineties. 

I  called  this  study  Hesper,  or  the  Cowboy  Patrol  for 
the  reason  that  in  "the  Cripple  Creek  War."  cattlemen  had 
acted  as  outposts  for  the  union  miners,  and  in  this  fact  I 
perceived  something  picturesque  and  new  and  telling,  some 
thing  which  would  give  me  just  the  imaginative  impulse 
I  required. 

Some  of  my  friendly  critics  were  still  occasionally  writing 
to  me  to  ask,  "Why  don't  you  give  us  more  Main  Traveled 
Roads  stories,"  and  it  was  not  easy  to  make  plain  to  them 
that  I  had  moved  away  from  that  mood,  and  that  my  life 
and  farm  life  had  both  greatly  altered  in  thirty  years.  To 
repeat  the  tone  of  that  book  would  have  been  false  not 
only  to  my  art,  but  to  the  country  as  well. 

Furthermore,  I  had  done  that  work.  I  had  put  together 
in  Main  Traveled  Roads  and  its  companion  volumes  a  group 
of  thirty  short  stories  (written  between  1887  and  1891),  in 
which  I  had  expressed  all  I  had  to  say  on  that  especial 
phase  of  western  life.  To  attempt  to  recover  the  spirit  of 

257 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

my  youth  would  not  only  have  been  a  failure  but  a  bore 
— even  to  those  who  were  urging  me  to  the  task.  It  was 
my  business  to  keep  moving — to  accompany  my  characters 
as  they  migrated  into  the  happier,  more  hopeful  West. 
Like  them  I  was  "Campin'  through,  podner,  just  a  campin' 
through." 

As  in  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  I  had 
dealt  with  the  three-cornered  fight  of  the  cattlemen,  the 
Indian,  and  the  soldier,  so  now,  in  1902,  I  returned  to 
the  mountain  West,  to  picture  another  conflict,  equally 
stirring  and  possessing  a  still  finer  setting  and  back-ground. 
In  Hesper  I  was  concerned  with  a  war,  in  which  most  of 
the  action  had  taken  place  among  the  clouds,  on  the  hill 
tops  nearly  two  miles  above  sea-level.  There  was  something 
grandly  pictorial  in  this  drama;  but,  after  writing  a  few 
chapters  of  it,  I  felt  the  need  of  revisiting  the  scene. 

Zulime  again  accompanied  me  and  as  our  train  slid 
down  the  familiar  road  leading  to  Colorado  Springs  and  we 
could  see  the  lightning  flashing  among  the  high  summits  on 
which  I  had  laid  the  scenes  of  my  story,  Zulime  glowed 
with  joy  and  I  took  on  a  renewed  sense  of  power.  For  an 
hour  I  felt  equal  to  my  task,  to  be  historian  of  the  free 
miner  seemed  to  me  a  worthy  office. 

The  Ehrichs  were  again  our  hosts  and  they  (as  well  as 
Russell  Wray,  the  Editor  of  the  Gazette]  took  the  keenest 
interest  in  my  design.  From  Wray  and  his  friends  I  began 
at  once  to  derive  an  understanding  of  the  part  which  "Little 
London"  (as  the  miners  called  the  Springs)  had  taken  in 
the  war.  I  relied  on  a  visit  to  Bull  Hill  and  Victor  to 
furnish  the  Sky- town  or  "Red-neck"  point  of  view. 

Wray  was  especially  valuable  to  me,  for  he  had  taken 
part  in  the  famous  expedition  of  the  "Yaller  Legs"  and  his 
experiences  as  a  reporter  and  his  sense  of  humor  had 
enabled  him  to  report  both  sides  of  the  controversy.  He 

258 


Signs     of    Change 

had  many  friends  in  the  camp,  to  whom  he  gave  me  letters. 

The  character  which  interested  me  most,  in  all  the  warring 
factions,  was  the  free  miner,  the  prospector,  the  man  of 
the  trail.  Him  I  clearly  understood.  He  had  been  com 
panion  in  most  of  my  trips  into  the  wild.  He  was  blood 
brother  to  my  father,  and  cousin  to  my  heroic  uncles.  He 
represented  the  finest  phases  of  pioneering.  "Matt  Kelley," 
"Rob  Raymond"  and  "Jack  Munroe,"  I  knew  and  loved, 
and  their  presence  in  this  labor  war  redeemed  it  from  the 
sordid,  uninspired  struggle  which  such  contests  usually  turn 
out  to  be.  In  my  design  these  three  characters  filled  heroic 
place. 

Zulime  (with  no  literary  problems  to  distract  her)  had 
another  easeful,  idyllic  summer.  The  Ehrichs,  the  Wrays 
and  the  Palmers  welcomed  her  as  an  old  friend,  and  in  their 
companionship  she  rode  and  camped  and  dined  in  easeful 
leisure,  but  I  was  on  the  move.  I  visited  a  ranch  on  the 
plains  of  Eastern  Colorado,  joined  a  round-up  in  the  Sierra 
Blanca  country,  explored  the  gambling-houses  and  mines  of 
Cripple  Creek  and  Victor,  and  spent  two  weeks  reexploring 
the  White  River  Plateau,  this  time  with  Walter  Wykoff,  of 
Princeton.  For  a  week  or  two,  Wykoff,  Miss  Ehrich  and 
Zulime  and  I  camped  high  on  the  shoulder  of  Pike's  Peak. 
Vast  and  splendid  scenes  of  storm  and  sun  were  printed  on 
my  mind,  and,  while  the  actual  writing  of  my  novel  halted, 
I  felt  certain  that  I  was  doing  just  the  right  thing.  I  felt 
sure  of  finishing  it  in  the  proper  spirit  of  enthusiasm. 

The  trip  not  only  enabled  me  to  finish  Hesper — it  sug 
gested  several  of  the  stories  which  went  into  They  of  the 
High  Trails  and  gave  me  the  plan  of  The  Forester's  Daugh 
ter.  I  returned  to  West  Salem,  brown  as  an  Indian  and 
bursting  with  energy,  and  for  several  weeks  toiled  with 
desperate  haste  to  put  my  impressions,  imaginings  in  form. 

Each  morning  of  those  peaceful  days  I  took  to  mother's 

259 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

room,  on  the  sunward  side  of  the  old  Homestead,  and  there 
wrought  into  final  shape  the  materials  I  had  gathered.  I 
had  only  to  shut  my  eyes  to  see  again  the  clouds  circling 
the  walls  of  Shavano.  In  imagination  I  rode  once  more 
with  Matt  Kelley  up  Bull  Hill,  or,  sitting  opposite  the  chief 
of  the  Miners'  Union,  reenjoyed  his  graphic  account  of  the 
coming  of  the  Federal  troops.  The  bawling  roar  of  the 
round-up  on  the  meadow  came  back  to  fill  my  eyes  with 
pictures  of  the  Sierra  Blanca  foothills.  In  truth  I  had  no 
need  of  notes.  I  was  embarrassed  with  material.  I  threw 
my  note-books  into  a  drawer  and  forgot  them. 

Letters  from  my  publishers  informed  me  that  The  Captain 
of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop  was  marching  on,  but  that  they 
hoped  I  was  at  work  on  something  to  follow  it.  To  this 
I  replied: 

"Yes,  I  am  in  the  midst  of  a  story  which  I  hope  will  be 
as  good  as  The  Captain,  but  don't  hurry  me!" 

Whilst  I,  busied  with  my  fiction,  kept  to  my  study, 
Zulime  was  ecstatically  rearranging  furniture.  During  our 
absence  in  Colorado,  father  had  moved  to  another  house, 
relinquishing  all  claim  on  the  Homestead,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  our  lives  my  wife  and  I  were  authentic  householders 
in  full  possession  of  every  room.  We  had  a  door-bell,  and 
our  clock  was  our  own.  Our  meal-times  conformed  to  our 
will,  and  not  to  another's.  We  went  to  bed  when  we 
pleased,  and  rose  when  we  got  ready. 

Zulime 's  joy  of  ownership  was  almost  comical.  Leading 
me  from  room  to  room  she  repeated,  "This  is  our  house. 
Don't  you  like  our  house?  Isn't  it  fun  to  have  it  all  to 
ourselves?" 

Her  rapture  instructed  me.  I  perceived  that  the  old 
Homestead  had  not  yet  served  its  purpose.  So  far  as  my 
father  was  concerned  it  was  a  story  told,  a  drama  almost 
ended,  but  as  the  undivided  home  of  my  young  wife  it 

260 


Signs     of     Change 

developed  new  meaning.  Another  soul  was  coming  into 
being;  another  tenant  was  about  to  take  its  place  beneath 
our  roof.  Small  feet  would  soon  be  dancing  through  those 
silent  rooms,  careless  of  the  men  and  women  whose  gray 
heads  and  gaunt  limbs  had  been  carried  out  over  their 
thresholds  to  a  final  resting-place  beneath  the  sod. 

A  new   interest,   a   new  phase  of  life,   was  coming   to 
Zulime,  and  to  me. 


261 


CHAPTER  EIGHTEEN 

The    Old    Pioneer    Takes    the    Back 
Trail 

IN  the  midst  of  this  period  of  hard  work  on  Hesper,  news 
of  the  death  of  Frank  Norris  came  to  me.  Frank  Norris 
the  most  valiant,  the  happiest,  the  handsomest  of  all  my 
fellow  craftsmen.  Nothing  more  shocking,  more  insensate 
than  the  destruction  of  this  glorious  young  fictionist  had 
come  to  my  literary  circle,  for  he  was  aglow  with  a  hus 
band's  happiness,  gay  with  the  pride  of  paternity,  and  in 
the  full  spring-tide  of  his  powers.  His  going  left  us  all 
poorer  and  took  from  American  literature  one  of  its  strong 
est  young  writers. 

The  papers  at  once  wired  me  for  tributes,  and  these  I 
gave,  gladly,  and  later  when  one  of  the  magazines  paid  me 
for  an  article,  I  used  the  money  in  the  purchase  of  a  tall 
clock  to  serve  as  a  memorial.  This  time-piece  stands  in  the 
hall  of  my  city  home  and  every  time  I  pass  it  I  am  re 
minded  of  the  fine  free  spirit  of  Frank  Norris.  In  my 
small  corner  of  the  world  he  remains  a  vital  memory. 

All  through  October  I  wrote  on  my  novel,  but  as  the  dark 
days  of  autumn  came  on,  I  began  as  usual  to  dwell  upon 
my  interests  in  the  city  and  not  even  Zulime's  companion 
ship  could  keep  me  from  a  feeling  of  restlessness.  I  longed 
for  literary  comradeship.  Theoretically  my  native  village 
was  an  ideal  place  in  which  to  write,  actually  it  sapped  me 
and  after  a  few  weeks  depressed  me.  With  no  literary 
''atmosphere,"  damnable  word,  I  looked  away  to  New  York 
for  stimulus.  I  did  not  go  so  far  as  one  of  my  friends  who 

262 


The  Old  Pioneer  Takes  the  Back  Trail 

declined  to  have  anything  to  do  with  his  relatives  simply 
because  he  did  not  like  them,  but  I  clearly  recognized  that 
my  friends  in  the  city  meant  more  to  me  than  any  of  my 
Wisconsin  neighbors  and  it  became  more  and  more  evident 
that  to  make  and  keep  an  arbitrary  residence  in  a  region 
which  did  not  in  itself  stimulate  or  satisfy  me,  was  a  mis 
take.  There  was  nothing  to  do  in  West  Salem  but  write. 

Above  all  other  considerations,  however,  I  had  a  feeling, 
perhaps  it  was  a  mistaken  one, — that  my  powers  grew  in 
proportion  as  I  went  Eastward.  In  West  Salem  I  was 
merely  an  amateur  gardener,  living  a  life  which  approached 
the  vegetable, — so  far  as  external  action  went.  In  Chicago 
I  was  a  perversity,  a  man  of  mis-directed  energy.  In  New 
York  I  was,  at  least  respected  as  a  writer. 

In  short  New  York  allured  me  as  London  allures  the 
writers  of  England,  and  as  Paris  attracts  the  artists  of 
Europe.  It  was  my  literary  capital.  Theoretically  I  be 
longed  to  Wisconsin,  as  Hardy  belonged  to  Wessex  or  Bar- 
rie  to  Scotland,  actually  my  happiest  home  was  adjacent 
to  Madison  Square.  Only  as  I  neared  the  publishing  cen 
ters  did  I  feel  the  slightest  confidence  in  the  future.  This 
increased  sense  of  importance  may  have  been  based  upon 
an  illusion  but  it  was  a  very  real  emotion  nevertheless. 

Why  should  I  not  feel  this?  From  my  village  home, 
from  digging  potatoes  and  doing  carpenter  work,  I  went 
(almost  directly)  to  a  luncheon  at  the  White  House,  and  the 
following  night  I  attended  a  dinner  given  to  Mark  Twain 
on  his  sixty-seventh  birthday  with  William  Dean  Howells, 
Thomas  B.  Reed,  Wayne  McVeagh,  Brander  Matthews,  H. 
H.  Rogers,  George  Harvey,  Pierpont  Morgan,  Hamilton 
W7right  Mabie  and  a  dozen  others  who  were  leaders  in  their 
chosen  work,  as  my  table  mates.  Perhaps  I  was  not  de 
serving  of  these  honors — I'm  not  urging  that  point — I  am 
merely  stating  the  facts  which  made  my  home  in  West 
Salem  seem  remote  and  lonely  to  me.  Acknowledging  my- 

263 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

self  a  weak  mortal  I  could  not  entirely  forego  the  honors 
which  the  East  seemed  willing  to  bestow,  and  as  father 
was  in  good  health  with  a  household  of  his  own,  I  felt  free 
to  spend  the  entire  winter  in  New  York.  For  the  first  time 
in  many  years,  I  felt  relieved  of  anxiety  for  those  left  be 
hind. 

New  York  was  in  the  worst  of  its  subway  upheaval  when 
we  landed  there,  but  having  secured  a  small  furnished  apart 
ment  in  a  new  but  obscure  hotel  on  Forty-seventh  street, 
Zulime  and  I  settled  down  for  the  winter.  Our  tiny  three- 
room  suite  (a  lovely  nest  for  a  woman)  was  not  in  the  least 
like  a  home  for  an  old  trailer  and  corn-husker  like  myself. 
Its  gas  log  and  gimcrack  mantel,  its  "Mission"  furniture  and 
its  "new  art"  rugs  were  all  of  hopeless  artificiality,  but  our 
sitting-room  (on  the  quiet  side  of  the  building)  received  the 
sun,  and  there  on  the  lid  of  a  small  desk  I  took  up  and 
carried  forward  the  story  of  Hesper  which  my  publishers 
had  asked  me  to  prepare  for  the  spring  trade. 

Before  we  had  time  to  unpack,  a  note  came  from  Presi 
dent  Roosevelt  asking  me  to  return  to  Washington  to  confer 
on  a  phase  of  the  Indian  service  with  which  I  was  familiar, 
and  I  went  at  once — glad  to  be  of  any  service — especially 
an  unofficial  service. 

It  was  always  a  pleasure  as  well  as  an  honor  to  meet 
Roosevelt.  He  was  our  first  literary  president.  His  esthetic 
interests  were  not  only  keen,  but  discriminating.  He  knew 
what  each  of  us  had  published,  and  valued  each  of  us  for 
the  particular  contributions  we  were  making  to  American 
literature.  Each  of  us  gave  him  something — in  my  case  it 
was  a  knowledge  of  the  West.  Notwithstanding  the  mul 
tiple  duties  of  his  office,  he  put  aside  a  part  of  each  day 
for  reading  and  when  he  read,  he  concentrated  upon  his 
page  with  such  intensity  that  he  remembered  all  that  was 
important  in  the  writing. 

He  knew  the  masters  in  the  other  arts  also.  If  he  had  a 
264 


The  Old  Pioneer  Takes  the  Back  Trail 

problem  in  architecture  or  medaling  or  painting  to  decide, 
he  went  to  Mead  or  St.  Gaudens,  or  Blashfield.  Under  his 
administration  the  White  House  had  resumed  its  fine  colo 
nial  character.  At  his  direction  Mead  and  McKim  had 
restored  it  to  the  noble  simplicity  of  Madison's  time.  They 
had  cleared  out  the  business  offices  and  removed  the  absurd 
mixture  of  political  machinery  and  household  furniture 
which  had  accumulated  under  the  rule  of  his  predecessors, 
most  of  whom  (coming  from  small  inland  towns)  knew 
nothing  of  any  art  but  government,  and  in  some  cases  not 
too  much  of  that.  On  this  particular  visit  I  recall  the  fact 
that  repairs  were  going  on,  for  the  President  invited  me  to 
take  luncheon  with  his  family,  and  we  ate  in  a  small  room 
on  the  front  of  the  house  for  the  reason  that  the  dining- 
room  was  in  process  of  being  restored  and  the  howl  of  the 
floor  polisher  was  resounding  through  the  hall. 

It  may  interest  the  reader  to  know  that  while  my  wife  and 
I  occasionally  lunched  or  dined  with  "the  choice  ones  of 
the  earth,"  we  prudently  practiced  "light  housekeeping" 
between  our  splendid  feasts.  Like  a  brown-bearded  Santa 
Clans  I  often  ran  the  gauntlet  of  the  elevator  boy  with 
pockets  bulging  bottles  of  milk,  hunks  of  cheese,  hot  muf 
fins,  and  pats  of  butter,  and  frequently,  when  the  weather 
was  bad,  or  when  some  one  had  neglected  to  invite  us  out,  we 
supped  in  our  room. 

Once  when  I  entered  laden  in  this  fashion  I  was  sharply 
taken  aback  by  the  presence  of  several  belated  callers,  very 
grand  ladies,  and  only  the  most  skilful  maneuvering  enabled 
me  to  slide  into  the  closet  and  out  of  my  overcoat  without 
betraying  my  cargo.  My  predicament  highly  amused  Zu- 
lime,  while  at  the  same  time  she  inwardly  trembled  for 
fear  of  a  smash.  I  mention  this  incident  in  order  to  reveal 
the  reverse  side  of  our  splendid  social  progress.  We  were 
in  no  danger  of  becoming  "spoiled"  with  feasting,  so  long 
as  we  kept  to  our  Latin  Quarter  methods  of  lunching. 

265 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

We  had  many  notable  dinners  that  winter,  but  our  long 
anticipated  visit  to  Mark  Twain's  house  in  Riverdale  stands 
out  above  them  all.  We  reached  the  house  about  seven 
o'clock,  by  way  of  an  ancient  hack  which  met  us  at  the 
depot  and  carried  us  up  the  hill,  into  the  yard  of  an  old- 
fashioned  mansion  sheltered  by  great  trees. 

Mark  came  running  lightly  down  the  broad  stairs  to  meet 
us  in  the  hall,  seemingly  in  excellent  health,  although  his 
spirits  were  not  at  all  as  boyish  as  his  step.  "I'm  glad  to 
see  you,"  he  said  cordially,  "but  you'll  find  the  house  a 
hospital.  The  girls  have  both  been  miserable  and  Mrs. 
Clemens,  I'm  sorry  to  say,  is  still  too  ill  to  see  you.  I 
bring  her  greetings  to  you  and  her  apology." 

Thereupon  he  related  with  invincible  humor  and  vivid 
phraseology,  the  elaborate  scheme  of  deception  to  which 
they  had  been  forced  during  Jean's  illness.  "Mrs.  Clemens 
was  very  weak,  so  low  that  the  slightest  excitement — so  the 
doctor  warned  us — might  prove  fatal ;  hence  we  were  obliged 
to  pretend  that  Jean  was  well  but  busy  doing  this  or  doing 
that,  in  order  that  her  mother  might  not  suspect  the  truth 
of  the  situation. 

"I  was  protected  by  the  doctor's  orders,  which  forbade 
me  from  spending  more  than  two  minutes  in  Mrs.  Clemens' 
room,  but  Clara,  who  was  allowed  to  nurse  her  mother,  was 
forced  to  enter  upon  a  season  of  unveracity  which  taxed  her 
imagination  to  the  uttermost.  She  had  to  pretend  that  Jean 
was  away  on  a  visit,  or  that  she  was  in  town  shopping  or 
away  at  a  dinner.  Together  we  invented  all  kinds  of  social 
engagements  for  her  and  that  involved  the  description  of 
new  gowns  and  a  list  of  the  guests  of  each  entertainment. 
Oh,  it  was  dreadful.  Fortunately  Clara  had  a  good  repu 
tation  with  her  mother,  and  was  able  to  carry  conviction, 
whereas  I  had  a  very  hard  time.  I  kept  getting  into  shoal 
water." 

He  was  very  funny — I  can  only  report  the  substance  of 

266 


The  Old  Pioneer  Takes  the  Back  Trail 

his  tale — and  yet  there  was  a  tone  in  his  voice  which  enabled 
me  to.  understand  the  tragic  situation.  Mrs.  Clemens'  ill 
ness  was  hopeless. 

All  through  the  dinner  he  talked  on  in  the  same  enthrall 
ing  fashion,  picturesque,  humorous,  tragic.  He  dealt  with 
June  bugs,  alcohol,  Christian  Science,  the  Philippine  out 
rage  and  a  dozen  other  apparently  unrelated  subjects.  He 
imitated  a  horse-fly.  He  swore.  He  quoted  poetry.  We 
laughed  till  our  sides  ached — and  yet,  all  the  while,  beneath 
it  all,  he  had  in  mind  (as  we  had  in  mind) — that  sweetly- 
patient  invalid  waiting  upstairs  for  his  good-night  caress. 

As  a  bitter  agnostic  as  well  as  a  tender  humorist  Mark 
Twain  loomed  larger  in  my  horizon  after  that  night.  The 
warmly  human  side  of  him  was  revealed  to  me  as  never 
before,  and  thereafter  I  knew  him  and  I  felt  that  he  knew 
me.  That  remote  glance  from  beneath  those  shaggy  eye 
brows  no  longer  deceived  me.  He  was  a  tender  and  loyal 
husband.  Later  when  I  came  to  read  the  marvelous  story 
of  his  life  as  related  by  Albert  Bigelow  Paine,  I  found  a 
part  of  my  intuitions  recorded  as  facts.  He  was  an  ele 
mental  western  American — with  many  of  the  faults  and  all 
of  the  excellencies  of  the  border. 

Meanwhile  I  was  at  work.  In  my  diary  of  this  date  I 
find  these  words,  "This  is  living!  The  sunlight  floods  our 
tiny  sitting-room  whose  windows  look  out  on  a  blue-and- 
white  mountainous  'scape  of  city  roofs.  We  have  dined 
and  the  steam  is  singing  in  our  gilded  radiator.  The  noise 
and  bustle  of  the  city  is  far  away. — I  foresee  that  I  shall 
be  able  to  do  a  great  deal  of  work  on  my  novel." 

In  that  last  sentence  I  was  reckoning  without  the  effect 
of  my  wife's  popularity.  Invitations  to  luncheons,  dinners, 
and  theater  parties  began  to  pile  up,  and  I  could  not  ask 
Zulime  to  deny  herself  these  pleasures,  although  I  tried  to 
keep  my  forenoons  sacred  to  my  pen.  I  returned  to  the 
manuscript  of  Hesper  and  succeeded  in  writing  at  least  a 

267 


A   Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

thousand  words  each  day;  on  fortunate  mornings  I  was  able 
to  turn  off  a  full  chapter. 

It  was  a  gay  and  satisfying  season.  We  met  all  our  old 
friends  and  made  many  new  ones,  finding  ourselves  more 
and  more  at  home  in  the  city.  We  rode  to  grand  receptions 
in  the  street  cars — as  usual — and  while  we  ate  our  lunch 
eons  at  inexpensive  cafes,  we  often  dined  with  our  more 
prosperous  fellow-craftsmen.  In  spite  of  many  interruptions 
I  managed  to  complete  my  novel.  By  the  first  of  March 
Hesper  was  ready  for  the  printer  and  I  turned  it  over  to 
Duneka. 

On  Zulime's  birthday  as  I  was  putting  the  last  chapter 
in  final  shape,  I  received  a  letter  from  father  which  said 
"I  am  coming  East.  Meet  me  in  Washington  on  the  2ist." 
To  this  request  there  was  but  one  answer:  "I'll  be  there." 

It  was  the  first  time  that  the  old  pioneer  had  taken  "the 
back  trail"  since  leaving  Boston,  nearly  fifty  years  before, 
and  I  rejoiced  in  his  decision.  The  thought  of  leading  him 
into  the  halls  of  Congress  and  pointing  out  for  him  the 
orators  whose  doings  had  been  so  long  his  chief  concern, 
was  pleasureable  to  me.  From  my  earliest  childhood  I  had 
heard  him  comment  on  the  weekly  record  of  Congressional 
debates.  He  loved  oratory.  He  was  a  hero-worshiper. 
With  him  the  Capitol  meant  Lincoln  and  Grant  and  Blaine 
and  Sherman.  It  was  not  a  city,  it  was  a  shrine. 

When  he  stepped  from  the  train  in  Washington  the  fol 
lowing  week,  I  was  there  to  meet  him,  and  for  several  days 
I  led  him  from  splendor  to  splendor.  With  me  he  saw 
Mount  Vernon,  the  White  House,  Congress,  the  library,  and 
his  patriotism  intensified  as  the  glories  of  his  country's 
capital  unrolled  before  his  eyes.  He  said  little,  only  looked, 
and  when  he  had  harvested  as  much  of  Washington  as  he 
could  carry  I  took  him  to  Philadelphia,  in  order  that  he 
might  breathe  the  air  of  Continental  Hall  and  gaze  upon 
its  sacred  Liberty  Bell.  His  patriotism  had  few  reserva- 

268 


The  aid  Pioneer  Takes  the  Back  Trail 

tions.     All   these  relics  were  of  high  solemnity  to  him. 

At  last  as  a  climax  we  approached  New  York,  whose 
glittering  bays,  innumerable  ships  and  monstrous  buildings 
awed  him  and  saddened  him.  It  was  a  picture  at  once  in 
credible  and  familiar,  resembling  illustrations  he  had  seen 
in  the  magazines,  only  mightier  more  magnificent  than  he 
had  imagined  any  of  it  to  be.  It  overwhelmed  him,  wearied 
him,  disheartened  him,  and  so  it  came  about  that  the  quiet 
dinners  he  took  with  me  at  my  club  were  his  most  enduring 
pleasures,  for  there  he  rested,  there  he  saw  me  at  home. 
He  acquired  an  understanding  of  my  endurance  of  the  vast 
and  terrible  town. 

Up  to  this  time  the  story  of  my  doings  in  the  East  had 
been  to  him  like  those  of  characters  in  highly-colored  ro 
mance.  He  had  believed  me  (in  a  sense)  when,  in  West 
Salem,  I  had  spoken  of  meetings  with  Roosevelt  and  How- 
ells  and  other  famous  men,  and  yet,  till  now,  he  had  never 
been  able  to  realize  the  fact  that  I  belonged  in  New  York, 
and  that  men  of  large  affairs  were  actually  my  friends.  He 
comprehended  now  (in  some  degree)  my  good  fortune,  and 
it  gratified  him  while  it  daunted  him.  He  understood  why 
I  could  not  live  in  West  Salem. 

If  he  was  proud  to  acknowledge  me  as  a  son,  I,  on  my 
part,  was  proud  to  acknowledge  him  as  my  father,  for  as 
he  sat  with  me  in  the  dining-room  of  the  club  or  walked 
about  the  Library  to  examine  the  relics  and  portraits  of 
Booth  (for  whom  he  had  a  passionate  admiration)  he  was 
altogether  admirable. 

At  the  end  of  our  third  day,  I  suggested  Boston.  To 
this  he  replied,  "No,  I've  had  enough,"  and  there  was  a 
tired  droop  in  his  voice.  "I'm  ready  to  go  home.  I'm  all 
tired  out  with  'seeing  things,'  and  besides  it's  time  to  be 
getting  back  to  my  garden." 

To  urge  him  to  remain  longer  would  have  been  a  mis 
take.  Boston  would  have  disturbed  and  bewildered  him. 

269 


A  Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

Not  only  would  he  have  failed  to  find  the  city  of  his  youth, 
he  would  have  been  saddened  by  the  changes.  His  loss  of 
power  to  remember  troubled  me.  He  retained  but  few  of 
his  impressions  of  Washington,  and  with  sorrow  I  acknowl 
edged  that  it  no  longer  mattered  whether  he  saw  Boston  or 
not.  He  had  waited  too  long  for  his  great  excursion.  He 
was  old  and  timid  and  longing  for  rest. 

As  he  went  to  his  train  (surfeited  with  strange  glories, 
crowds  and  exhibitions)  he  repeated  that  his  dinners  with 
me  at  the  club  remained  his  keenest  pleasures.  In  tasting 
a  few  of  my  comforts  he  understood  why  I  loved  the  great 
city.  He  saw  me  also  in  an  established  position,  and  this 
he  considered  a  gain.  His  faith  in  my  future  was  now 

complete. 

*        *        * 

For  years  he  had  talked  of  this  expedition,  planned  for 
it,  calculated  upon  its  expense,  and  now  it  was  accom 
plished.  He  went  back  to  his  garden  with  a  sense  of  pride, 
of  satisfaction  which  he  would  share  with  his  cronies  as  they 
met  in  Johnson's  Drug  Store  or  Anderson's  Meat  Market. 
What  he  said  of  me  I  do  not  know,  but  I  fear  he  reported 
me  as  living  in  unimaginable  luxury  and  consorting  on  terms 
of  equality  with  the  great  ones  of  New  York. 


270 


CHAPTER  NINETEEN 
New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

MEANWHILE,  Chicago  rushing  toward  its  two  million 
mark,  had  not,  alas!  lived  up  to  its  literary  promise 
of  '94.  In  music,  in  painting,  in  sculpture  and  architecture 
it  was  no  longer  negligible,  but  each  year  its  authors  ap 
peared  more  and  more  like  a  group  of  esthetic  pioneers 
heroically  maintaining  themselves  in  the  midst  of  an  in 
creasing  tumult  of  material  upbuilding. 

One  by  one  its  hopeful  young  publishing  houses  had 
failed,  and  one  by  one  its  aspiring  periodicals  had  withered 
in  the  keen  wind  of  Eastern  competition.  The  Dial  alone 
held  on,  pathetically  solitary,  one  might  almost  say  alien 
and  solitary. 

Against  all  this  misfortune  even  my  besotted  optimism 
could  not  prevail.  My  pioneering  spirit,  subdued  by  years 
of  penury  and  rough  usage,  yielded  more  and  more  to  the 
honor  and  the  intellectual  companionship  which  the  East 
offered.  To  Fuller  I  privately  remarked:  "As  soon  as  I  can 
afford  it  I  intend  to  establish  a  home  in  New  York." 

"I'd  go  further,"  he  replied.  "I  would  live  in  Italy  if  I 
could." 

It  was  a  very  significant  fact  that  Chicago  contained  in 
1903  but  a  handful  of  writers,  while  St.  Louis,  Cleveland, 
Cincinnati,  Detroit  and  Kansas  City  had  fewer  yet.  "What 
is  the  reason  for  this  literary  sterility?"  I  asked  of  my  com 
panions.  "Why  should  not  these  powerful  cities  produce 
authors?  Boston,  when  she  had  less  than  three  hundred 

271 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle    Border 

thousands  citizens  had  Lowell,  Longfellow,  Emerson  and 
Holmes." 

The  answer  was  (and  still  is),  "Because  there  are  few 
supporters  of  workers  in  the  fine  arts.  Western  men  do  not 
think  in  terms  of  art.  There  are  no  literary  periodicals  in 
these  cities  to  invite  (and  pay  for)  the  work  of  the  author 
and  the  illustrator,  and  there  is  moreover  a  tendency  on  the 
part  of  our  builders  to  give  the  eastern  sculptor,  painter  or 
architect  the  jobs  which  might  be  done  by  local  men.  Until 
Chicago  has  at  least  one  magazine  founded  like  a  university, 
and  publishing  houses  like  Scribners  and  Macmillans  our 
authors  and  artists  must  go  to  New  York."  Of  course  none 
of  these  answers  succeeded  in  clearing  up  the  mystery,  but 
they  were  helpful. 

Some  of  the  writers  in  the  Little  Room  were  outspokenly 
envious  of  my  ability  to  spend  half  my  winters  in  the  East, 
but  Lorado  Taft  stoutly  declared  that  the  West  inspired 
him,  satisfied  him.  "Chicago  suits  me,"  he  asserted,  "and 
besides  I  can't  afford  to  run  away  from  my  job.  You 
should  be  the  last  man  to  admit  defeat,  you  who  have  been 
preaching  local  color  and  local  patriotism  all  your  days." 

In  truth  Taft  was  one  of  the  few  who  could  afford  to 
remain  in  Chicago  for  its  public  supported  him  handsomely, 
but  those  of  us  who  wrote  had  no  organizations  to  help 
sustain  our  self-esteem.  Nevertheless  I  permitted  him  to 
imagine  my  pessimism  to  be  only  a  mood  which,  in  some 
degree  it  was,  for  I  had  many  noble  friends  in  the  city  who 
invited  me  to  'dinner  even  if  they  did  not  read  my  books. 

The  claims  of  Chicago  upon  me  had  been  strengthened 
by  the  presence  of  Professor  Taft  who  had  given  up  his 
home  in  Kansas  and  was  now  settled  not  far  from  his  son 
and  near  the  University.  He  had  brought  all  his  books  and 
other  treasures  with  intent  to  spend  the  remaining  years  of 
his  life  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  illustrious  son  and  his  two 

272 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

daughters,  a  fact  which  I  could  not  overlook  in  any  plans 
for  changing  my  own  residence. 

Don  Carlos  Taft  was  a  singular  and  powerful  figure,  as  I 
have  already  indicated,  a  stoic,  of  Oriental  serenity,  one 
who  could  smile  in  the  midst  of  excruciating  pain.  With 
his  eyes  against  a  blank  wall  he  was  able  to  endlessly  amuse 
himself  by  calling  up  the  deep-laid  concepts  of  his  earlier 
years  of  study.  Though  affected  with  some  obscure  spinal 
disorder  which  made  every  movement  a  punishment,  he 
concealed  his  suffering,  no  matter  how  intense  it  might  be, 
and  always  answered,  "Fine,  fine!"  when  any  of  us  asked 
"How  are  you  to-day?" 

He  lived  in  Woodlawn  as  he  had  lived  in  Kansas,  like  a 
man  in  a  diving  bell.  His  capacious  brain  filled  with 
"knowledges"  of  the  days  when  Gladstone  was  king  and 
Darwin  an  outlaw,  had  little  room  for  the  scientific  theories 
of  Bergson  and  his  like.  He  remained  the  old-fashioned 
New  England  theologian  converted  to  militant  agnosticism. 

Although  at  this  time  over  seventy  years  of  age  his  mind 
was  notably  clear,  orderly  and  active,  and  his  talk  (usually 
a  carefully  constructed  monologue)  was  stately,  formal  and 
precise.  He  used  no  slang,  and  retained  scarcely  a  word 
of  his  boyhood's  vernacular.  The  only  emotional  expression 
he  permitted  himself  was  a  chuckle  of  glee  over  an  intellec 
tual  misstatement  or  a  historical  bungle.  Novels,  theaters, 
music  possessed  no  interest  for  him. 

He  had  read,  I  believe,  one  or  two  of  my  books  but  never 
alluded  to  them,  although  he  manifested  a  growing  respect 
for  my  ability  to  earn  money,  and  especially  delighted  in  my 
faculty  for  living  within  my  means.  He  watched  the  slow 
growth  of  my  income  with  approving  eyes.  To  him  as  to 
my  father,  earning  money  was  a  struggle,  saving  it  a  virtue, 
and  wasting  it  a  crime. 

In  almost  every  other  characteristic  he  was  my  father's 

273 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

direct  antithesis — my  father,  whose  faith  approximated  that 
of  a  Sioux  warrior.  "I  take  things  as  they  come,"  was  one 
of  his  sayings.  He  was  not  concerned  with  the  theories  of 
Evolution,  the  Pragmatic  Philosophy  or  any  other  formal 
system  of  learning  or  ethics.  With  him  the  present  was 
filled  with  duties,  the  remote  past  or  the  distant  future  was 
of  indifferent  concern.  To  deal  justly  and  to  leave  the 
world  a  little  better  than  he  found  it,  was  his  creed. 

The  one  point  of  contact  between  these  widely  divergent 
pioneers  was  their  love  of  Zulime,  for  my  father  was  almost 
as  fond  of  her  as  Don  Carlos  himself,  and  distinctly  more 
expressive  of  his  love — for  Father  Taft  held  affection  to  be 
something  not  quite  decorous  when  openly  declared.  He 
never  offered  a  caress  or  spoke  an  affectionate  word  so  far 
as  I  know. 

There  was  something  pathetic  in  his  situation  in  these 
days.  Full  of  learning  and  eager  to  share  it  with  youth  he 
could  find  no  one  willing  to  listen  to  him — not  even  his 
children.  In  the  midst  of  a  vast  city  he  was  sadly  solitary. 
None  of  his  children  appeared  interested  in  his  allusions 
to  Hammurabi  or  Charlemagne,  on  the  contrary,  mono 
logues  of  any  kind  were  taboo  in  the  artistic  circles  where 
Lorado  reigned.  We  was  too  busy,  we  were  all  too  busy 
with  our  small  plans  and  daily  struggles,  to  take  any  interest 
in  Locke  or  Gibbon  or  Hume,  therefore  the  ageing  philos 
opher  sat  forlornly  among  his  faded,  musty  books,  dream 
ing  his  days  away  on  some  abstruse  ethical  problem,  or 
carving  with  his  patient  knife  some  quaintly  ornate  piece 
of  furniture,  while  my  own  father  (at  the  opposite  pole  of 
life)  weeded  his  garden,  read  the  daily  paper  or  played 
cinch  with  the  men  at  the  village  drugstore. 

Nevertheless,  with  full  knowledge  of  these  fundamental 
divergencies  in  the  lives  of  our  sires,  I  urged  Zulime  to 
invite  Professor  Taft  to  spend  a  few  weeks  in  West  Salem. 
"He  and  father  will  disagree,  but  the  one  is  a  philosopher 

274 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

accustomed  to  pioneer  types  and  the  other  a  man  of  reason 
and  I  am  willing  to  risk  their  coming  together  if  you  are." 

Don  Carlos  seemed  pleased  by  this  invitation  and  prom 
ised  to  come  "one  of  these  days." 

Our  return  to  Wisconsin  in  April  was  a  return  to  winter. 
On  looking  from  our  car  windows  at  dawn,  we  found  the 
ground  white  with  snow,  and  flakes  of  frost  driving  through 
the  budding  branches  of  the  trees.  Every  bird  was  mute, 
as  if  with  horror  and  the  tender  amber-and-green  leaves  of 
the  maples  shone  through  the  rime  with  a  singular  and 
pathetic  beauty. 

Happily  this  was  only  a  cold  wave.  Toward  noon  the 
sun  came  out,  the  icy  cover  sank  into  the  earth  and  the 
robins  began  to  sing  again  as  if  to  reassure  themselves  as 
well  as  us. 

We  came  back  to  the  Homestead  now  with  a  full  sense 
of  our  proprietorship.  It  was  entirely  ours  and  it  was  wait 
ing  for  us.  Father  was  at  the  gate,  it  is  true,  but  he  was 
there  this  time  merely  as  care-taker,  as  supervisor  of  the 
garden — our  garden. 

His  greeting  of  Zulime  had  a  deeper  note  of  tenderness 
than  he  had  ever  used  hitherto,  for  he  was  aware  of  our 
hope,  and  shared  our  joyous  expectancy.  "I'm  glad  you've 
come,"  he  said  simply.  "I  hate  to  see  the  house  standing 
here  cold  and  empty.  It  don't  seem  natural  or  right." 

His  first  act  was  to  lead  us  out  to  the  garden  where 
orderly  beds  of  springing  vegetables  testified  to  his  care. 
"I  didn't  do  anything  about  the  flowers,"  he  confessed 
rather  shamefacedly.  "I'm  no  good  at  that  kind  of  work." 

As  the  days  went  by  I  discovered  that  father's  heart 
clung  to  the  old  place.  He  loved  to  spend  his  days  upon 
it.  He  was  comfortable  in  his  own  little  cottage,  but  it 
seemed  too  small  and  too  "slick"  for  him.  He  liked  our 
trees  and  lawn  and  barn,  and  I  was  glad  to  have  him 
continue  his  supervision  of  them.  They  gave  him  some- 

275 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

thing  to  think  about,  something  to  do.  The  curse  of  the 
"tired  farmers"  of  the  village  was  their  enforced  idleness. 
There  was  almost  nothing  for  them  to  exercise  upon. 

He  spent  most  of  each  day  tinkering  around  the  barn, 
overseeing  the  garden  or  resting  on  the  back  porch  where 
mother  used  to  sit  and  look  out  on  the  valley.  On  Sunday 
he  came  in  to  supper,  and  afterward  called  for  "The  Sweet 
Story  of  Old"  and  "The  Palace  of  the  King."  He  listened 
in  silence,  a  blur  in  his  dreaming  eyes,  for  the  past  returned 
on  the  wings  of  these  songs. 

Nobly  considerate  in  his  attitude  toward  Zulime  he 
seemed  to  understand,  perfectly,  her  almost  childish  joy 
in  the  possession  of  a  nest  of  her  own.  He  never  came  to  a 
meal  without  invitation,  though  he  was  seldom  without  the 
invitation,  for  Zulime  was  fond  of  him  and  had  only  one 
point  of  contention  with  him:  "I  wish  you  wouldn't  wear 
your  working  clothes  about  the  street,"  she  said — and  art 
fully  added,  "You  are  so  handsome  when  you  are  in  your 
Sunday  suit,  I  wish  you  would  wear  it  all  the  time." 

He  smiled  with  pleasure,  but  replied:  "I'd  look  fine 
hoeing  potatoes  in  my  Sunday  suit,  wouldn't  I!"  Neverthe 
less  he  was  mindful  of  her  request  and  always  came  to 
dinner  in,  at  worst,  his  second  best. 

Each  day  the  gardens  about  us  took  on  charm.  The 
plum  and  cherry  trees  flung  out  banners  of  bloom  and  later 
the  apple  trees  flowered  in  pink-and-white  radiance.  Won 
der-working  sap  seemed  to  spout  into  the  air  through  every 
minute  branch.  Showers  of  rain  alternated  with  vivid 
sunshine,  and  through  the  air,  heavy  with  perfume,  the 
mourning  dove  sang  with  sad  insistence  as  if  to  remind  us 
of  the  impermanency  of  May's  ineffable  loveliness.  Butter 
flies  suddenly  appeared  in  the  grass,  and  the  bees  toiled  like 
harvesters,  so  eager,  so  busy  that  they  tumbled  over  one 
another  in  their  haste.  Nature  was  at  her  sweetest  and 

276 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

loveliest,  and  in  the  midst  of  it  walked  my  young  wife,  in 
quiet  anticipation  of  motherhood. 

Commonplace  to  others  our  rude  homestead  grew  in 
beauty  and  significance  to  us.  Day  by  day  we  sat  on  our 
front  porch,  and  watched  the  clouds  of  blossoms  thicken. 
If  we  walked  in  our  garden  we  felt  the  creative  loam  throb- 
bing  beneath  our  feet.  Each  bird  seemed  as  proud  of  the 
place  as  we.  Each  insect  was  in  a  transport  of  activity. 

Into  the  radiant  white  of  the  cherry  blossoms,  impetuous 
green  shoots  (new  generations)  appeared  as  if  in  feverish 
haste,  unwilling  to  await  the  passing  of  the  flowers.  The 
hills  to  the  south  were  soaring  bubbles  of  exquisite  green 
vapor  dashed  with  amber  and  pink  and  red.  Each  morn 
ing  the  shade  of  the  maple  trees  deepened,  and  on  the  lawn 
the  dandelions  opened,  sowing  with  pieces  of  gold  the  velvet 
of  the  sward.  The  songs  of  the  robin,  the  catbird  and  the 
thrush  became  more  confident,  more  prolix  until,  at  last,  the 
drab  and  angular  little  village  was  transfigured  into  celestial 
beauty  by  the  heavenly  light  and  melody  of  completed 
spring. 

In  a  certain  sense  here  was  the  wealth  I  had  been  strug 
gling  to  secure.  Here  were — seemingly — all  the  elements 
of  man's  content,  a  broad  roof,  a  generous  garden,  spreading 
trees,  blossoming  shrubs,  a  familiar  horizon  line,  a  lovely 
wife — and  the  promise  of  a  child! 

Truly,  I  should  have  been  happy,  and  in  my  sour,  big- 
fisted  way  I  was  happy.  I  tried,  honestly,  to  grasp  and  hold 
the  ecstasy  which  these  days  offered.  I  who  had  lived  for 
twelve  years  on  railway  trains,  in  camp,  on  horse-back  or  in 
wretched  little  city  hotels,  was  now  a  portly  householder, 
a  pampered  husband  and  a  prospective  parent.  And  yet — 
such  is  my  perverse  temperament — I  could  not  overlook  the 
fact  that  this  tranquil  village  like  thousands  of  others  scat 
tered  over  the  West,  was  but  a  half-way  house,  a  pleasant 

277 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

hospital  into  which  many  of  the  crippled,  worn-out  and 
white-haired  farmers  and  their  wives  had  come  to  rest  for 
a  little  while  on  their  way  to  the  grave. 

As  I  walked  the  shaded  street,  perceiving  these  veterans 
of  the  hoe  and  plow,  digging  feebly  in  the  earth  of  their 
small  gardens,  or  sitting  a-dream  on  the  narrow  porches  of 
their  tiny  cottages  my  joy  was  embittered.  Age,  age  was 
everywhere.  Here  in  the  midst  of  the  flowering  trees  the 
men  of  the  Middle  Border  were  withering  into  dust. 

In  the  city  one  does  not  come  into  anything  like  this  close 
relationship  with  a  dying  generation.  The  tragedy  is  ob 
scured.  Here  Zulime  and  I.  young  and  strong,  were  living 
in  the  midst  of  an  almost  universal  senility  and  decay. 
There  was  no  escape  from  these  grim  facts. 

Looked  at  from  a  distance  there  was  comfort  in  the 
thought  of  these  pioneers,  released  from  the  grind  of  their 
farm  routine,  dozing  at  ease  beneath  the  maple  trees,  but 
closely  studied  they  became  sorrowful.  I  knew  too  much 
about  them.  Several  of  them  had  been  my  father's  com 
panions  in  those  glorious  days  in  fifty-five.  Yonder  white- 
haired  invalid,  sitting  in  the  sun  silently  watching  his  bees, 
had  been  a  famous  pilot  on  the  river,  and  that  bushy-haired 
giant,  halting  by  on  a  stick,  was  the  wreck  of  a  mighty 
hunter.  The  wives  of  these  men  equally  worn,  equally 
rheumatic  and  even  more  querulous,  had  been  the  rosy, 
laughing,  dancing  companions  of  Isabel  McClintock  in  the 
days  when  Richard  Garland  came  a-courting.  All,  all  were 
camping  in  lonely  cottages  while  their  sons  and  daughters, 
in  distant  cities  or  far-off  mountain  valleys,  adventuring  in 
their  turn,  were  taking  up  the  discipline  and  the  duties  of  a 
new  border,  a  new  world. 

As  a  novelist  I  could  not  fail  to  observe  these  melancholy 
features  of  a  life  which  on  its  surface  seemed  idyllic.  In 
New  York,  in  Chicago  I  was  concerned  mainly  with  happy, 
busy  people  of  my  own  age  or  younger. — here  I  was  brought 

278 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

into  close  contact  daily — almost  hourly — with  the  passing 
of  my  father's  generation  and,  also,  I  was  made  aware  of 
the  coming  in  of  an  alien,  uninspiring  race.  The  farms  of 
the  Dudleys,  the  McKinleys,  the  Coburns  were  being  taken 
by  the  Smeckpeffers,  the  Heffelfingers,  and  the  Bergmans! 
Already  the  pages  of  the  village  newspaper  were  peppered 
with  such  names,  and  a  powerful  Congregation  was  building 
a  German  church  on  the  site  of  the  old-time  Methodist 
meeting  house  of  my  boyhood.  My  strain  was  dying  out — 
a  new  and  to  my  mind  less  admirable  America  was  com 
ing  on. 

As  June  deepened  my  father  (who  realized  something  of 
the  changes  going  on)  proposed  a  trip  to  the  town  in  Iowa 
near  which  we  had  lived  for  twelve  years,  and  to  this  I 
consented,  feeling  that  this  visit  could  not  safely  be  post 
poned  another  year. 

He  had  never  been  back  to  our  prairie  farm  in  Mitchell 
County  since  leaving  it,  over  twenty  years  before,  and  now 
(with  money  and  leisure)  he  was  eager  to  go,  and  as  my 
old  Seminary  associates  had  asked  me  to  speak  at  their 
Commencement,  we  rode  away  one  lovely  June  day  up 
along  the  Mississippi  to  Winona,  thence  by  way  of  a  wind 
ing  coulee,  to  the  level  lands,  and  so  across  to  Mitchell 
County,  our  old  home.  The  railroad,  which  was  new  to  us, 
ran  across  Dry  Run  prairie  within  half  a  mile  of  our  school- 
house,  but  so  flat  and  monotonous  did  the  whole  country 
now  appear,  we  could  not  distinguish  any  familiar  land 
marks.  The  "hills"  along  the  creek  were  barely  noticeable 
from  the  car,  and  all  the  farm-steads  were  hidden  by  groves 
of  trees.  We  passed  our  former  home  without  recognizing 
it! 

Osage,  we  soon  discovered,  was  almost  as  much  of  an 
asylum  for  the  aged  as  West  Salem.  It,  too,  was  filled  with 
worn-out  farmers,  men  with  whom  my  father  had  subdued 
the  sod  in  the  early  days.  Osmond  Button,  William  Frazer, 

279 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

Oliver  Cole,  David  Babcock  were  all  living  "in  town"  on 
narrow  village  lots,  "taking  it  easy"  as  they  called  it,  but 
they  were  by  no  means  as  contented  as  they  seemed  to  the 
casual  onlooker.  Freed  from  the  hard  daily  demands  of 
the  farm,  many  of  them  acknowledged  a  sense  of  useless- 
ness,  a  fear  of  decay. 

As  fast  as  they  learned  of  our  presence,  scores  of  loyal 
friends  swarmed  about  us  expressing  a  sincere  regard  for  my 
father,  and  a  kind  of  wondering  respect  for  me.  Some  of 
them  clung  to  my  father's  hand  as  though  in  hope  of  re 
covering  through  him  some  gleam  of  the  beauty,  some  part 
of  the  magic  of  the  brave  days  gone — days  when  the  land 
was  new  and  they  were  young.  "You  must  come  home  with 
me,"  each  man  insisted,  "the  women  folks  all  want  to  see 
you." 

Twenty  years  had  wrought  great  changes  in  the  men  as 
well  as  in  the  county,  and  my  father  was  bewildered  and 
saddened  by  the  tale.  One  by  one  he  called  the  names  of 
those  who  had  been  his  one-time  friends  and  neighbors. 
Some  were  dead,  others  had  moved  away — only  one  or  two 
remained  where  he  had  left  them,  and  it  was  in  the  hope  of 
seeing  these  men  and  at  the  same  time  to  visit  the  farm  and 
school-house  on  Dry  Run,  and  the  church  at  Burr  Oak,  that 
I  hired  a  carriage  and  drove  my  father  out  along  the  well- 
remembered  lane  to  the  north  and  east — I  say  "well-remem 
bered"  although  the  growth  of  the  trees  and  the  presence  of 
new  buildings  made  its  appeal  mixed  and  unsatisfactory  to 
us  both. 

We  found  our  house  almost  hid  in  the  trees  which  we 
had  planted  on  the  bare  prairie  thirty  years  before.  As  we 
stood  in  the  yard  I  spoke  of  the  silver  wedding  which  took 
place  there.  The  yard  was  attractive  but  the  house  (in 
fested  by  the  family  of  a  poor  renter)  was  repulsive.  The 
upstairs  chamber  in  which  I  had  slept  for  so  many  years 

280 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

presented  a  filthy  clutter  of  chicken  feathers,  cast-off  furni 
ture  and  musty  clothing.  Our  stay  was  short. 

Strangers  were  in  all  of  the  other  houses  along  the  way — 
we  found  but  two  of  our  former  neighbors  at  home,  and  the 
farther  we  drove  the  more  melancholy  we  both  became. 

One  of  the  places  which  I  wished  especially  to  revisit  was 
the  school-house  at  Burr  Oak,  the  room  which  had  been 
our  social  center  in  the  early  eighties.  In  it  we  had  listened 
to  church  service  in  summer,  and  there  in  winter  our  Grange 
Suppers  and  Friday  Lyceums  had  been  held.  It  was 
there,  too,  that  I  had  worshiped  at  the  shrine  of  Hattie's 
girlish  beauty,  when  as  a  shock-haired  lad  I  forgot,  for  a 
day,  the  loneliness  of  my  prairie  home. 

Alas!  the  tall  oaks  which  in  those  days  had  given  dignity 
and  charm  to  the  yard  had  all  been  cut  down,  and  the  build 
ing,  once  glorified  by  the  waving  shadows  of  the  leaves,  now 
stood  bare  as  a  bone  beside  the  road.  An  alien  lived  where 
Betty  once  reigned,  and  the  white  cottage  from  which  Agnes 
was  wont  to  issue  in  her  exquisite  Sunday  frock,  was  un- 
tenanted  and  falling  into  decay. 

How  lovely  those  girls  had  seemed  to  me  as  I  watched 
them  approach,  walking  so  daintily  the  path  beside  the 
fence!  What  rich,  alluring  color  flamed  in  Bettie's  cheek, 
what  fire  flashed  in  Aggie's  dark  and  roguish  eyes! 

To  a  stranger,  Burr  Oak — my  Burr  Oak — even  in  Sev 
enty-two  was  only  a  pleasant  meeting  place  of  prairie  lanes 
on  the  margin  of  a  forest,  but  to  me  it  had  been  a  temple  of 
magic.  I  had  but  to  shut  my  eyes  to  desolating  changes, 
turning  my  vision  inward,  in  order  to  see  myself  (a  stocky 
awkward  boy  in  a  Sunday  suit  with  a  torturing  collar) 
standing  on  the  porch  waiting  to  see  those  white-clad  maid 
ens  pass  into  the  vestibule. 

Too  shy  in  those  days  to  meet  their  eyes,  too  worshipful 
to  ever  hope  for  word  or  smile,  I  remained  their  silent 

281 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

adorer.    Here  and  now  I  set  down  the  tribute  which  I  could 
not  then  express: 

O  maids  to  whom  I  never  spoke,  to  whom 

My  dreaming  ran  in  lonely  field, 

Because  of  you  I  saw  the  bloom 

Of  Maytime  more  abundantly  revealed. 

From  you  each  bud  new  magic  caught. 

When  you  were  near,  my  skies 

Were  brighter,  for  your  beauty  brought 

A  poet's  rapture  to  my  eyes. 

Men  tell  me  you  are  bent  and  gray, 

And  worn  with  toil  and  pain ; 

And  so  I  pray  the  Wheel  of  Chance 

May  never  set  us  face  to  face  again. 

Better  that  I  should  think  of  you 

As  you  then  were,  strong  and  sweet, 

Walking  your  joyous  sunlit  way 

Between  the  wheat  and  roses  of  the  lane — 

Pass  on,  O  weary  women  of  today — 

Remain  forever  'mid  the  roses  and  the  wheat, 

O  girls  with  laughing  lips  and  dancing  feet  I 

That  ride  and  the  people  I  met  closed  a  gate  for  me.  I 
accomplished  a  painful  relinquishment.  That  noon-day 
sun  divided  my  past  from  my  present  as  with  the  stroke  of 
a  flaming  sword.  Up  to  this  moment  I  had  retained,  in 
formless  fashion,  a  belief  that  I  could  some  time  and  some 
how  reach  out  and  regain,  at  least  in  part,  the  substance  of 
the  life  I  had  once  lived  here  in  this  scene.  Now  I  con 
fessed  that  not  only  was  my  youth  gone  but  that  the  friends 
and  the  place  of  my  youth  had  vanished.  My  heart,  wrung 
with  a  measureless  regret  filled  my  throat  with  pain,  and 
as  I  looked  in  my  father's  face  I  perceived  that  he,  too, 
was  feeling  the  force  of  Time's  inexorable  decree. 

We  started  homeward  in  silence,  speaking  only  now  and 
then  when  some  object  made  itself  recognizable  to  us. 

282 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

"I  shall  never  ride  this  lane  again,"  I  said  as  we  were 
nearing  the  town.  "It  has  been  a  sad  experience.  The 
world  of  my  boyhood — the  world  we  both  knew — is  utterly 
gone.  It  exists  only  in  your  memory  and  mine.  I  want  to 
get  away — back  to  Zulime  and  the  present." 

"I'm  ready  to  go,"  replied  my  father.  "I  thought  I'd 
enjoy  visiting  the  old  place  and  seeing  old  neighbors,  but  I 
haven't.  It's  all  too  melancholy.  I'm  ready  to  go  back 
to  the  LaCrosse  Valley  and  stay  there  what  little  time  I've 
got  left  to  me." 

That  night,  at  the  Seminary,  I  met  the  Alumni  and  spoke 
to  them  on  some  subject  connected  with  the  early  history 
of  the  school,  and  in  doing  so  I  obtained  once  again  a  per 
ception  of  the  barrier  which  had  risen  between  my  class 
mates  and  myself.  They  were  not  only  serious,  they  were 
piteously  solemn.  No  one  laughed,  no  one  took  a  light  and 
airy  view  of  life.  Once  or  twice  I  tried  to  jest  or  ventured 
a  humorous  remark,  but  these  attempts  to  lighten  the  gloom 
were  met  with  chilling  silence.  No  one  whispered  or  smiled 
or  turned  aside.  It  was  like  a  prayer  meeting  in  the  face 
of  famine. 

Part  of  this  was  due  no  doubt  to  their  habit  of  listening 
to  sermons,  but  some  of  it  arose  I  am  sure  from  a  feeling 
of  poignant  regret  similar  to  that  which  burdened  my  own 
heart.  As  usual  in  such  reunions  the  absent  ones  were 
named  and  the  faces  of  the  dead  recalled.  In  all  our  songs 
the  rustling  of  withered  leaves  could  be  heard.  All  felt  the 
pitiless  march  of  time  and  I  respected  them  for  their  per 
ception  of  life's  essential  enigma. 

After  the  "Services"  were  finished,  several  of  the  women 
came  up  to  me  and  introduced  themselves.  One  handsome 
gray-haired  woman  said:  "I  am  Rosa  Clinton,"  and  it 
shocked  me  to  be  unable  to  find  in  her  the  girl  I  once  knew. 
Another  matron  whom  I  recognized  at  once,  retained  some 
thing  inescapably  girlish  in  both  face  and  voice.  It  hurt 

283 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

me  to  detect  in  her  withered  lips  the  quaint  twist  which 
had  once  been  so  charming  to  me — but  then  she  undoubtedly 
discovered  in  me  equally  distressing  reminders  of  decay. 

Not  all  my  philosophy  could  prevent  me  from  falling  into 
profound  melancholy.  I  went  back  to  my  hotel  thinking  of 
these  men  and  women  as  they  were  when,  as  a  youth  of 
twenty,  I  trod  with  them  the  worn  plank  walks  beneath  the 
magical  murmuring  maple  trees.  The  bitter  facts  of  their 
lives  gave  rise  to  question.  What  was  it  all  about?  What 
was  the  value  of  their  efforts  or  my  own?  Has  the  life  of 
man  any  more  significance  than  that  of  an  insect? 

Just  before  leaving  for  the  train  next  day  we  called  on 
Osmond  Button,  who  clung  to  my  father  with  piteous  in 
tensity.  "Stay  another  day,"  he  pleaded,  but  father  would 
not  listen  to  any  postponement. 

This  old  neighbor  went  to  the  train  with  us,  knowing 
full  well  that  he  and  my  father  would  never  meet  again. 

Thus  it  happened — curiously,  yet  most  naturally — that 
the  last  man  we  saw  as  we  left  Osage  was  our  first  neighbor 
on  Dry  Run  prairie  in  the  autumn  of  Seventy-one. 

From  this  melancholy  review  of  the  bent  forms  of  ancient 
friends  and  neighbors,  dreaming  of  the  past,  I  returned  to 
my  wife,  who  was  concerned  entirely  with  the  future. 
What  had  she  to  do  with  elderly  folk?  Life  to  her  was 
sweet  and  promiseful.  Intently  toiling  over  the  adornment 
of  tiny  caps,  socks  and  gowns,  joyful  as  a  girl  of  seven  mak 
ing  dresses  for  a  doll,  she  insisted  on  displaying  to  me  all 
of  that  lilliputian  wardrobe.  A  dozen  times  each  day  she 
called  on  me  to  admire  this  or  that  garment,  and  I  was 
greatly  relieved  to  find  that  the  growing  wonder  of  the 
experience  through  which  she  was  about  to  pass,  prevented 
her  from  giving  way  to  fear  of  it.  Over  me,  at  times,  an 
icy  shadow  fell.  Suppose — suppose ! 

One  night  she  dreamed  that  a  babe  had  come  to  us,  and 

284 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

that  the  nurse  had  carelessly  allowed  it  to  chill  and  die, 
but  I  had  no  such  disturbing  premonitions.  Contrary  to  the 
statements  of  sentimental  novelists  and  poets  I  almost  never 
dreamed  of  my  wife.  I  more  often  dreamed  of  Howells  or 
Roosevelt  or  some  of  my  editorial  friends,  indeed  I  often 
had  highly  technical  literary  dreams  wherein  I  prepared 
manuscripts  for  the  press  or  composed  speeches  or  poems, 
and  sometimes  my  mother  or  Jessie  came  back  to  me — but 
Zulime  had  never  up  to  this  time  entered  my  sleep. 

One  afternoon  during  this  period  of  waiting  and  just 
after  I  had  finished  the  writing  of  Hesper  we  joined  our 
good  friends  the  Eastons  on  an  excursion  up  the  Missis 
sippi  on  their  house-boat,  a  glorious  outing  which  I  mention 
because  it  was  the  farthest  removed  from  my  boyhood  life 
on  Dry  Run  prairie  whose  scenes  had  just  been  vividly 
brought  to  mind. 

Here  was  the  flawless  poetry  of  recreation,  the  perfection 
of  travel.  To  sit  in  a  reclining  chair  on  the  screened-in 
forward  deck  of  a  beautiful  boat,  what  time  it  was  being 
propelled  by  some  invisible  silent  machinery,  up  a  shining 
river,  reflecting  wooded  bluffs,  was  like  taking  flight  on  the 
magic  carpet  of  my  boyhood's  story  book.  The  purple 
head-lands  projecting  majestically  into  the  still  flood  took 
on  once  more  the  poetry  and  the  mystery  of  the  prehistoric. 
One  by  one  those  royal  pyramids  ordered  and  adorned  them 
selves  for  our  inspection  while  the  narrow  valleys  opening 
their  gates,  displayed  all  their  tranquil  pastoral  charm. 

Our  meals,  delicately  cooked  and  perfectly  served,  ap 
peared  as  if  by  conjury,  on  a  table  in  the  dining-room  amid 
ships,  and  as  we  ate  we  watched  the  glory  deepen  on  the 
clouds,  while  the  waters,  soundless  as  oil,  rolled  past  our 
open  doors.  It  was  all  a  passage  to  the  Land  of  the  Lotos 
to  me.  How  had  I,  whose  youth  had  been  so  full  of 
penury  and  toil,  earned  a  share  in  such  leisure,  such  luxury? 

285 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

Was  it  right  for  me  to  give  myself  up  to  the  enjoyment  of 
it?  For  Zulime's  sake  I  rejoiced  in  it,  knowing  that  her 
days  were  long  with  waiting  and  suspense: 

Without  knowing  much  of  the  bitter  anguish  of  the  or 
deal,  I  held  maternity  to  be  (as  the  great  poets  had  taught 
me  to  hold  it)  a  noble  heroism.  "If  mankind  is  worth  con 
tinuing  on  this  earth,"  I  had  written,  "then  the  mother  is 
entitled  to  the  highest  honor,  the  tenderest  care.  Science 
should  do  its  best  to  lessen  her  pain,  to  make  her  birth-bed 
honorable." 

In  spite  of  my  wife's  brave  smile  I  sensed  in  her  a  sub 
conscious  dread  of  what  was  coming,  and  this  anxiety  I 
shared  so  fully  that  I  ceased  to  write  and  gave  all  my  time  to 
her.  Together  we  walked  the  garden  or  drove  about  the 
country  in  the  low-hung,  easy-riding  old  surrey,  tracing  the 
wooded  ways  we  loved  the  best,  or  climbing  to  where  a 
wide  view  of  the  valley  offered.  I  understood  her  laughing 
stoicism  much  better  now,  and  it  no  longer  deceived  me. 
She  made  light  of  her  own  fears  in  order  that  I  might  not 
worry.  The  fact  that  she  was  past  her  first  youth  was  my 
torment,  for  I  had  read  that  the  danger  increased  with  every 
year  beyond  twenty-five  and  the  thought  that  we  might 
never  ride  these  lanes  again  came  into  my  mind  and  would 
not  be  exorcised.  At  such  moments  as  I  could  snatch  I 
worked  on  a  series  of  lectures  which  I  was  scheduled  to 
deliver  at  the  University  of  Chicago — lectures  on  Edwin 
Booth  which  brought  back  my  Boston  days. 

At  last  the  dreaded  day  came! — I  shall  not  dwell  upon 
the  long  hours  of  the  mother's  pain,  or  on  the  sleepless 
anxiety  of  my  household,  for  I  have  no  desire  to  relive 
them.  I  would  rather  make  statement  of  my  relief  and 
gratitude  when  after  many,  many  hours  of  suffering,  Edward 
Evans  of  LaCrosse,  a  scientific,  deft  and  powerful  surgeon, 
came  to  the  mother's  rescue.  He  was  a  master — the  man 
who  knew! 

286 


At  last  the  time  came  when  I  was  permitted  to  take  my  wife- 
lovely  as  a  Madonna — out  into  the  sunshine,  and,  as  she  sat 
holding  Mary  Isabel  in  her  arms,  she  gathered  to  herself  an 
ecstasy  of  relief,  a  joy  of  life  which  atoned,  in  part,  for  the 
inescapable  sufferings  of  maternity. 


New    Life    in    the    Old    House 

He  saved  both  mother  and  child,  and  when  the  nurse 
laid  in  my  arms  a  little  babe,  who  looked  up  at  me  with 
grave,  accusing  blue  eyes, — the  eyes  of  her  mother, — I 
wondered  whether  society  had  a  right  to  put  any  woman 
to  this  cruel  test — whether  the  race  was  worth  maintaining 
at  such  a  price. 

Our  loyal  friend,  Mary  Easton  (mother  of  five  children), 
who  was  present  to  help  us  through  our  stern  trial,  assured 
me  that  maternity  had  its  joys  as  well  as  its  agonies,  and 
after  she  had  peered  into  the  face  of  my  small  daughter 
she  remarked  to  me  with  a  delightful  note  of  admiration; 
"Why,  she  is  already  a  person!" 

So  indeed  she  was.  Her  head,  large  and  shapely  and 
her  eyes  wide,  dark  and  curiously  reflective,  were  like  her 
mother's.  True,  she  hadn't  much  nose,  but  her  hair  was 
abundant  and  her  fingers  exquisite.  She  lay  in  my  big 
paws  with  what  seemed  to  me  to  be  tranquil  confidence, 
and  though  her  legs  were  comically  rudimentary,  her  glance 
manifested  an  unassailable  dignity.  My  father  insisted 
she  resembled  her  grandmother. 


At  last  came  the  blessed  day  when  the  nurse  permitted 
me  to  wheel  the  convalescent  out  upon  the  porch.  The 
morning  was  lovely,  with  just  a  hint  of  autumn  in  its  cool 
ness,  and  to  Zulime  it  was  heavenly  sweet,  for  it  seemed 
that  she  had  emerged  from  a  long  dark  night  of  agony  and 
doubt. 

As  she  sat  with  the  babe  in  her  lap  looking  over  the  fa 
miliar  hills,  she  was  more  beautiful  than  she  had  ever  been 
before.  She  was  a  being  glorified. 

Later  in  the  day,  as  the  sun  was  going  down  in  a  welter 
of  gold  and  crimson,  she  came  out  again  and  in  its  splendor 
I  chose  to  read  the  promise  of  a  noble  future  for  Mary 
Isabel.  It  gave  me  joy  to  know  that  she  had  taken  up  her 

287 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

life  beneath  the  same  roof  and  almost  in  the  same  room  in 
which  Isabel  Garland  had  laid  her  burden  down. 

Yes,  the  Homestead  had  a  new  claimant.  In  the  midst 
of  my  father's  decaying  world  a  new  and  vigorous  life  had 
miraculously  appeared.  Beneath  the  moldering  leaves  of 
the  leaning  oaks  a  tender  yet  tenacious  shoot  was  springing 
from  the  soil. 


288 


CHAPTER  TWENTY 
Mary     Isabel's     Chimney 

NO  one  who  reads  the  lives  of  writers  attentively  can 
fail  of  perceiving  the  periods  of  depression — almost 
of  despair — into  which  we  are  all  liable  to  fall — days  when 
nothing  that  we  have  done  seems  worth  while — moods  of 
groping  indecision  during  which  we  groan  and  most  un 
worthily  complain.  I  am  no  exception.  For  several  months 
after  the  publication  of  Hesper  I  experienced  a  despairing 
emptiness,  a  sense  of  unworthiness,  a  feeling  of  weakness 
which  I  am  certain  made  me  a  burden  to  my  long-suffering 
wife. 

"What  shall  I  do  now?"  I  asked  myself. 

From  my  standpoint  as  a  novelist  of  The  Great  North 
west,  there  remained  another  subject  of  study,  the  red  man 
—The  Sioux  and  the  Algonquin  loomed  large  in  the  prairie 
landscape.  They  were,  in  fact,  quite  as  significant  in  the 
history  of  the  border  as  the  pioneer  himself,  for  they  were 
his  antagonists.  Not  content  with  using  the  Indian  as 
an  actor  in  stories  like  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse 
Troop,  I  had  done  something  more  direct  and  worthy  through 
a  manuscript  which  I  called  The  Silent  Eaters,  a  story  in 
which  I  tried  to  put  the  Sitting  Bull's  case  as  one  of  his 
partisans  might  have  depicted  it.  I  had  failed  for  lack  of 
detailed  knowledge,  and  the  manuscript  lay  in  my  desk  un 
touched. 

It  was  in  this  period  of  doubt  and  disheartenment  that  I 
turned  to  my  little  daughter  with  gratitude  and  a  deep  sense 

289 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

of  the  mystery  of  her  coming.  The  never-ending  surprise 
of  her  presence  filled  me  with  delight.  Like  billions  of 
other  Daddies  I  forgot  my  worries  as  I  looked  into  her 
tranquil  eyes.  To  protect  and  educate  her  seemed  at  the 
moment  my  chiefest  care. 

During  the  mother's  period  of  convalescence  I  acted — in 
my  hours  of  leisure — as  nurse-maid  quite  indifferent  to  the 
smiles  of  spectators,  who  made  question  of  my  method.  I 
became  an  expert  in  holding  the  babe  so  that  her  spine 
should  not  be  over-taxed,  and  I  think  she  liked  to  feel  the 
grip  of  my  big  fingers.  That  she  appreciated  the  lullabies 
I  sang  to  her  I  am  certain,  for  even  my  Aunt  Deborah  was 
forced  to  admit  that  my  control  of  my  daughter's  slumber 
period  was  remarkably  efficient. 

The  coming  of  this  child  changed  the  universe  for  me. 
She  brought  into  my  life  a  new  element,  a  new  consideration. 
The  insoluble  mystery  of  sex,  the  heroism  of  maternity, 
the  measureless  wrongs  of  womankind  and  the  selfish  cruelty 
of  man  rose  into  my  thinking  with  such  power  that  I  began 
to  write  of  them,  although  they  had  held  but  academic  in 
terest  hitherto.  With  that  tiny  woman  in  my  arms  I  looked 
into  the  faces  of  my  fellow  men  with  a  sudden  realization 
that  the  world  as  it  stands  to-day  is  essentially  a  male  world 
— a  world  in  which  the  female  is  but  a  subservient  partner. 
"It  is  changing,  but  it  will  still  be  a  man's  world  when  you 
are  grown,"  I  said  to  Mary  Isabel. 

My  devotion,  my  slavery  to  this  ten-pound  daughter 
greatly  amused  my  friends  and  neighbors.  To  see  "the  grim 
Klondiker,"  in  meek  attendance  on  a  midget  sovereign  was 
highly  diverting — so  I  was  told  by  Mary  Easton,  and  I 
rather  think  she  was  right.  However,  I  was  undisturbed  so 
long  as  Mary  Isabel  did  not  complain. 

She  was  happy  with  me.  She  rode  unnumbered  joyous 
miles  upon  my  left  elbow  and  cantered  away  into  dream 
land  by  way  of  the  ancient  walnut  rocker  in  which  her 

290 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

grandmother  had  been  wont  to  sit  and  dream.  Deep  in 
her  baby  brain-cells  I  planted  vague  memories  of  "Down  the 
River,"  "Over  the  Hills  in  Legions,"  and  "Nellie  Wild- 
wood,"  for  I  sang  to  her  almost  every  evening  of  her  infant 
life. 

"Rock-a-bye,  baby,  thy  cradle  is  green. 
Papa's  a  nobleman — mother's  a  queen," 


was  one  of  her  most  admired  lullabys.  It  was  a  marvelous 
time  for  me — the  happiest  I  had  known  since  boyhood.  Not 
even  my  days  of  courtship  have  greater  charm  to  me  now. 

The  old  soldier  was  almost  as  completely  subordinated  as 
I.  Several  times  each  day  he  came  into  the  house  to  say, 
"Well,  how  is  my  granddaughter  getting  on?"  and  upon 
seeing  her,  invariably  remarked,  "She's  the  very  image  of 
Belle," — and  indeed  she  did  resemble  my  mother.  He  ex 
pressed  the  wish  which  was  alive  in  my  own  heart,  when  he 
said,  "If  only  Belle  could  have  lived  to  see  her  grand 
daughter." 

My  new  daughter  was  all  important,  but  the  new  book 
could  not  be  neglected.  Hesper  was  scheduled  for  publica 
tion  in  October  and  copy  must  go  to  the  printer  in  August, 
therefore  I  was  forced  to  leave  my  wife  and  babe  and  go 
East  to  attend  to  the  proof-reading  and  other  matters  inci 
dental  to  the  birth  of  another  novel.  Some  lectures  in 
Chicago  and  Chautauqua  took  up  nearly  two  weeks  of  my 
time  and  when  I  arrived  in  New  York,  huge  bundles  of 
galley-proof  were  awaiting  me. 

My  publishers  were  confident  that  the  new  book  would 
equal  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop  in  popularity, 
but  I  was  less  sanguine.  For  several  weeks  I  toiled  on  this 
job,  and  at  last  on  the  eleventh  of  September,  a  day  of 
sweltering  heat,  I  got  away  on  the  evening  train  for  the 
West.  In  spite  of  my  poverty  and  notwithstanding  the 

291 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

tender  age  of  my  daughter,  I  had  decided  to  fetch  my 
family  to  New  York. 

On  November  tenth,  we  found  ourselves  settled  in  a 
small  apartment  overlooking  Morningside  Park,  which 
seemed  a  very  desirable  playground  for  Mary  Isabel. 

Relying  on  my  books  (which  were  selling  with  gratifying 
persistency)  we  permitted  ourselves  a  seven-room  apart 
ment  with  a  full-sized  kitchen  and  a  maid — whom  we  had 
brought  on  from  West  Salem.  We  even  went  so  far  as  to 
give  dinner  parties  to  such  of  our  friends  as  could  be  trusted 
to  overlook  our  lack  of  plate,  and  to  remain  kindly  unob 
servant  of  the  fact  that  Dora,  the  baby's  nurse,  doubled  as 
waitress  after  cooking  the  steak. 

In  this  unassuming  fashion  we  fed  the  Hernes,  the  Sev 
erances,  and  other  of  our  most  valued  friends  who  devoured 
the  puddings  which  Zulime  "tossed  up,"  with  a  gusto  highly 
flattering  to  her  skill,  while  the  sight  of  me  as  baby-tender 
proved  singularly  amusing — to  some  of  our  guests.  It  will 
be  seen  that  we  were  not  cutting  entirely  loose  from  the 
principles  of  economy  in  which  we  had  been  so  carefully 
schooled — our  hospitalities  had  very  distinct  (enforced) 
limits. 

Our  wedding  anniversary  came  while  we  were  getting 
settled  and  my  present  to  Zulime  that  year  was  a  set  of 
silver  which  I  had  purchased  with  the  check  for  an  article 
called  "A  Pioneer  Wife" — the  paper  which  I  had  written 
as  a  memorial  to  my  mother.  In  explanation  of  the  fact 
that  all  these  silver  pieces  bore  the  initials  I.  G.,  I  said, 
"You  are  to  think  of  them  as  a  gift  from  my  mother.  Imag 
ine  that  I  gave  them  to  her  long  ago,  and  that  they  now 
come  to  you,  from  her,  as  heirlooms.  Let  us  call  them  'The 
family  silver'  and  hand  them  down  to  Mary  Isabel  in  her 
turn." 

Zulime,  who  always  rose  to  a  sentiment  of  this  kind, 
gratefully  accepted  this  vicarious  inheritance  and  thereafter 

292 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

I  was  pleased  to  observe  that  whenever  Mary  Isabel  wished 
to  break  a  plate  she  invariably  reached  for  one  of  her 
grandmother's  solid  silver  spoons — they  were  so  much  more 
effective  than  the  plated  ones! 

Christmas  came  to  us  this  year  with  new  and  tender 
significance,  for  "Santy  Claus"  (who  found  us  at  home  in 
New  York,  rejoicing  in  our  first  baby)  brought  to  us  our 
first  tree,  and  the  conjunction  of  these  happy  events  pro 
duced  in  my  wife  almost  perfect  happiness.  Further 
more,  Mary  Isabel  achieved  her  first  laugh.  I  am  sure  of 
this  fact,  for  I  put  it  down  in  my  notebook,  with  these  words, 
"She  has  a  lovely  smile  and  a  chuckle  like  her  grand 
mother's.  She  robs  us  of  solitude,  and  system,  and  order, 
but  our  world  would  now  be  desolate  without  her."  Only 
when  I  thought  of  what  her  grandfather  was  missing  did 
I  have  a  sense  of  regret. 

At  our  feast  our  daughter  sat  in  the  high  chair  which 
Katherine  Herne  had  given  her,  and  looked  upon  the  tiny, 
decorated  tree  with  eyes  of  rapture,  deep,  dark-blue  eyes  in 
which  a  seraphic  light  shone.  Her  life  was  beginning  far, 
very  far,  from  the  bleak  prairie  lands  in  which  her  Daddy's 
winter  holidays  had  been  spent,  and  while  the  silver  spoon 
in  her  mouth  was  not  of  my  giving,  the  one  with  which  she 
bruised  her  chair-arm,  was  veritably  one  of  my  rewards. 

In  order  to  continue  my  practice  as  an  Author,  I  man 
aged  to  sandwich  the  writing  of  an  occasional  article  be 
tween  spells  of  minding  the  baby — and  working  on  club 
committees.  I  recall  going  to  Princeton  to  tell  Henry  Van 
Dyke's  Club  about  "The  Joys  of  the  Trail,"  and  it  pleased 
me  to  be  introduced  as  a  "Representative  of  the  West." 
West  Point  received  me  in  this  capacity,  and  I  also  read  at 
one  of  Lounsbury's  "Smokers"  at  Yale,  but  I  was  kept  from 
any  undue  self -congratulation  by  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  my  income  was  still  considerably  below  the  standard 
of  a  railway  engineer — as  perhaps  it  should  be.  My  "ar- 

293 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

riving"  was  always  in  an  accommodation  train  fifty  minutes 
late. 

Evidence  of  my  literary  success,  if  you  look  at  it  that 
way,  may  have  lain  in  an  invitation  to  dine  at  Andrew  Car 
negie's,  but  a  suspicion  that  I  was  being  patronized  made 
me  hesitate.  It  was  only  after  I  learned  that  Burroughs  and 
Gilder  were  going  that  I  decided  to  accept,  although  I  could 
not  see  why  the  ironmaster  should  include  me  in  his  list. 
I  had  never  met  him  and  was  not  eager  for  his  recognition. 

The  guests  (nearly  all  known  to  me)  were  most  distin 
guished  and  it  was  pleasant  to  meet  with  them,  even  in  this 
palace.  We  marched  into  the  dining-room  keeping  step  to 
the  music  of  a  bagpipe.  The  speaking  which  followed  the 
dinner  was  admirable.  Hamilton  Wright  Mabie  and  John 
Finley  were  especially  adroit  and  graceful,  and  Carnegie, 
who  had  been  furnished  with  elaborate  notes  by  his  secre 
tary,  introduced  his  speakers  with  tact  and  humor,  although 
it  was  evident  that  in  some  cases  he  would  have  been  help 
less  without  his  literary  furnishing — to  which  in  my  case  he 
referred  with  especial  care. 

He  was  an  amazement  to  me.  T  could  not  imagine  him  in 
the  role  of  "Iron  King,"  on  the  contrary  he  appeared  more 
like  a  genial  Scotch  school-master,  one  genuinely  interested 
in  learning.  Had  it  not  been  for  his  air  of  labored  apprecia 
tion,  and  the  glamour  of  his  enormous  wealth,  the  dinner 
would  have  been  wholly  enjoyable. 

One  charming  human  touch  saved  the  situation.  The 
tablecloth  (a  magnificent  piece  of  linen)  was  worked  here 
and  there  with  silken  reproductions  of  the  signatures  of 
former  distinguished  guests.  "Mrs.  Carnegie,"  our  host 
explained,  "works  these  signatures  into  the  cloth  with  her 
own  hands."  Each  of  us  was  given  a  soft  pencil  and  re 
quested  to  add  his  name. 

It  happened  that  Gilder,  Seton,  Burroughs  and  myself 
went  away  together,  and  the  doorman  showed  a  mild  sur- 

294 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

prise  in  the  fact  that  no  carriage  awaited  us.  Gilder  with 
comic  intonation  said,  "Some  of  you  fellows  ought  to  have 
saved  this  situation  by  ordering  a  cab." 

"As  the  only  man  with  a  stovepipe  hat  the  job  was 
yours,"  I  retorted. 

This  struck  the  rest  of  the  party  as  funny.  In  truth,  each 
of  us  except  Gilder  wore  some  sort  of  soft  hat,  and  all  to 
gether  we  formed  a  sinister  group.  "I  don't  care  what 
Andrew  thinks  of  us,"  Gilder  explained,  "but  I  hate  to  have 
his  butler  get  such  a  low  conception  of  American  author 
ship."  On  this  point  we  all  agreed — and  took  the  Madison 
Avenue  street  car. 

Meanwhile,  I  was  secretly  dreaming  of  getting  rich  my 
self. 

Every  American,  with  a  dollar  to  spare,  at  some  time  in 
his  life  takes  a  shot  at  a  gold  mine.  It  comes  early  in  some 
lives  and  late  in  others,  but  it  comes!  In  my  case  it  came 
after  the  publication  of  Hesper  just  as  I  was  verging  on 
forty-five,  and  was  the  result  of  my  brother's  connections  in 
Mexico.  Impatient  of  getting  money  by  growing  trees  he 
had  resigned  his  position  on  a  rubber  farm  and  was  digging 
gold  in  Northern  Mexico. 

Our  mine,  situated  about  twenty  miles  from  Camacho, 
was  at  the  usual  critical  stage  where  more  capital  is  needed, 
therefore  in  April  I  persuaded  Irving  Bacheller  and  Archer 
Brown  to  go  down  with  me  and  take  a  look  at  the  property. 
Of  course  I  had  a  lump  of  ore  to  show  them — and  it  was 
beautiful ! 

I  recall  that  when  this  sample  came  to  me  by  express,  I 
had  my  first  and  only  conviction  that  my  financial  worries 
were  over.  Even  Zulime  was  impressed  with  my  brother's 
smelter  reports  which  gave  the  proportion  of  gold  to  the 
ton,  precisely  set  down  in  bold  black  figures.  All  we  had 
to  do  was  to  ship  a  sufficient  number  of  car  lots  for  the  year 
and  our  income  would  rival  that  of  Carnegie's. 

295 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

We  decided  to  break  up  our  little  home,  and  while  I  went 
to  Mexico,  Zulime  planned  to  visit  Chicago  and  await  my 
return.  I  was  loth  to  dismantle  our  apartment,  and  when 
at  the  station  I  said  good-by  to  my  little  daughter  and 
her  mother,  I  was  almost  persuaded  that  nothing  was  worth 
the  pain  of  parting  from  that  small  shining  face  and  those 
seeking,  clinging  hands.  She  had  grown  deep  into  my  heart 
during  those  winter  months. 

I  felt  very  poor  and  lonely  as  I  went  to  my  bed  at  the 
club  that  first  night  after  our  separation,  and  when  next 
day  Bacheller  invited  me  out  to  his  new  home  at  Sound 
Beach,  I  gratefully  accepted,  although  I  was  in  the  middle 
of  getting  a  new  book  through  the  press — a  job  which  my 
publishers  had  urged  upon  me  against  my  better  judgment. 
I  felt  that  I  was  being  hurried. 

Bacheller,  highly  prosperous,  was  living  at  this  time  in  a 
handsome  waterside  bungalow,  with  a  big  sitting-room  in 
which  a  generous  fire  glowed.  It  happened  that  he  was 
entertaining  General  Henderson  of  Iowa,  and  when  in  some 
way  it  developed  that  we  were  all  famous  singers,  a  spirited 
contest  arose  as  to  which  of  us  could  beat  the  others. 
Henderson  sang  Scotch  lyrics  very  well,  and  Bacheller  was 
full  of  tunes  from  his  North  Country,  whilst  I — well  if  I 
didn't  keep  my  whiffletree  off  the  wheel,  it  was  not  for  lack 
of  effort.  I  sang  "Maggie"  and  "Lily  Dale"  and  "Rosalie 
the  Prairie  Flower,"  all  of  which  made  a  powerful  impres 
sion  on  Henderson;  but  it  was  not  till  I  sang  "The  Rolling 
Stone,"  that  I  fully  countered.  Irving  asked  me  to  repeat 
this  song,  but  I  refused.  "You  might  catch  the  tune,"  I 
explained. 

The  general's  face  shone  with  pleasure  but  a  wistful 
cadence  was  in  his  voice.  "Your  tunes  carry  me  back  to  my 
boyhood,"  he  said,  "I  heard  my  mother  sing  some  of  them." 

He  was  near  the  end  of  his  life,  although  none  of  us 
realized  it  that  night,  and  we  all  went  our  ways  in  the  glow 

296 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

of  a  tender  friendship — a  friendship  deepened  by  this 
reminiscent  song.  Three  days  later  Bacheller  and  I  were 
entering  Mexico  on  our  way  to  my  mine. 

Although  Bacheller  declined  to  go  into  partnership  with 
me  we  had  a  gorgeous  trip,  and  that  was  the  main  object 
so  far  as  the  other  fellows  were  concerned,  and  as  I  wrote 
an  article  on  the  caverns  of  Cacawamilpa  which  paid  my 
expenses  I  was  content. 

In  returning  to  the  North  by  way  of  El  Paso  and  the 
Rock  Island  road,  I  encountered  a  sandstorm,  whose  fero 
city  dimmed  the  memory  of  the  one  in  which  my  father's 
wheat  was  uprooted.  It  was  frightful.  From  this  I  passed 
almost  at  once  to  the  bloom,  the  green  serenity,  and  the 
abundance  of  my  native  valley.  It  was  a  kind  of  paradise 
by  contrast  to  the  South-west  and  to  take  my  little  daughter 
to  my  bosom,  to  look  into  her  eyes,  to  feel  her  little  palms 
patting  my  cheeks,  was  a  pleasure  such  as  I  had  never  ex 
pected  to  own.  Every  father  who  reads  this  line  will  under 
stand  me  when  I  declare  that  she  had  "developed  wonder 
fully"  in  the  month  of  my  absence.  To  me  every  change  in 
my  first  born  was  thrilling — and  a  little  sad — for  the  fairy 
of  to-day  was  continually  displacing  the  fairy  of  yesterday. 

Believing  that  this  had  ended  my  travels  for  the  summer, 
I  began  to  work  on  a  novel  which  should  depict  the  life  of  a 
girl,  condemned  against  her  will  to  be  a  spiritualistic  me 
dium, — forced  by  her  parents  to  serve  as  a  "connecting 
wire  between  the  world  of  matter  and  the  world  of  spirit." 

This  theme,  which  lay  outside  my  plan'  to  depict  the 
West,  had  long  demanded  to  be  written,  and  I  now  set  about 
it  with  vigor.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  knew  a  great  deal 
about  mediums,  for  at  one  time  I  had  been  a  member  of  the 
Council  of  the  American  Psychical  Society,  and  as  a  special 
committee  on  slate  writing  and  other  psychical  phenomena 
had  conducted  many  experiments.  I  had  in  my  mind  (and 
in  my  notebooks)  a  mass  of  material  which  formed  the 

297 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

background  of  my  story,  The  Tyranny  of  the  Dark.  It 
made  a  creditable  serial  and  a  fairly  successful  book,  but  it 
will  probably  not  count  as  largely  in  my  record  as  "Martha's 
Fireplace,"  a  short  story  which  I  wrote  at  about  the  same 
time.  I  do  not  regret  having  done  this  novel,  because  at 
the  moment  it  seemed  very  much  worth  while,  but  I  was 
fully  aware,  even  then,  that  it  had  a  much  narrower  appeal 
than  either  Hesper  or  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop. 

In  the  midst  of  my  work  on  this  book  our  good  friends, 
Mary  and  Fred  Easton,  invited  us  to  go  with  them,  in  their 
houseboat,  on  a  trip  to  the  World's  Fair  in  St.  Louis. 
Mrs.  Easton  offered  to  take  Mary  Isabel  and  her  nurse  into 
her  own  lovely  home  during  our  absence,  and  as  Zulime 
needed  the  outing  we  joined  the  party. 

It  was  a  beautiful  experience,  a  kind  of  dream  journey, 
luxurious,  effortless,  silent  and  suggestive, — suggestive  of 
the  great  river  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  Dubuque.  Some 
times  for  an  hour  or  more  we  lost  sight  of  the  railway,  and 
the  primitive  loneliness  of  the  stream  awed  and  humbled  us. 

For  ten  days  we  sailed  in  such  luxury  as  I  had  never 
known  before;  and  when  we  reached  home  again  it  was  the 
splendor  of  the  stream  and  not  the  marvels  of  the  Fair 
which  had  permanently  enriched  me.  I  have  forgotten 
almost  every  feature  of  the  exhibition,  but  the  sunset  light 
falling  athwart  the  valleys  and  lighting  the  sand-bars  into 
burning  gold  fills  my  memory  to  this  day. 

Here  I  must  make  another  confession.  Up  to  this  time 
our  big  living-room  had  no  fireplace.  I  had  thrown  out 
bay-windows,  tacked  on  porches,  and  constructed  bath 
rooms;  but  the  most  vital  of  all  the  requisites  of  a  home 
stead  was  still  lacking.  We  had  no  hearth  and  no  outside 
chimney. 

A  fireplace  was  one  of  the  possessions  which  I  really 
envied  my  friends.  I  had  never  said,  al  wish  I  had  Bachel- 
ler's  house,"  but  I  longed  to  duplicate  his  fireplace. 

298 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

Like  most  of  my  generation  in  the  West  I  had  been  raised 
beside  a  stove,  with  only  one  early  memory  of  a  fireplace, 
that  in  my  Uncle  Davids's  home,  in  the  glow  of  which, 
nearly  forty  years  before,  I  had  lain  one  Thanksgiving 
night  to  hear  him  play  the  violin — a  memory  of  sweetest 
quality  to  me  even  now.  Zulime's  childhood  had  been 
almost  equally  bare.  She  had  hung  her  Christmas  stock 
ings  before  a  radiator,  as  I  had  strung  mine  on  the  wall, 
behind  the  kitchen  stove.  Now  suddenly  with  a  small 
daughter  to  think  of,  we  both  began  to  long  for  a  fireplace 
with  a  desire  which  led  at  last  toward  action — on  my  part, 
Zulime  was  hesitant. 

"As  our  stay  in  the  Old  Homestead  comes  always  during 
the  summer,  it  seems  a  wilful  extravagance  to  put  our  hard- 
earned  dollars  into  an  improvement  which  a  renter  would 
consider  a  nuisance,"  she  argued. 

"Nevertheless  I'm  going  to  build  a  fireplace,"  I  replied. 

"You  mustn't  think  of  it,"  she  protested. 

"Consider  what  a  comfort  it  would  be  on  a  rainy  day  in 
June,"  I  rejoined.  "Think  what  it  would  do  for  the  baby 
on  dark  mornings." 

This  had  its  effect,  but  even  then  she  would  not  agree 
to  have  it  built. 

Another  deterrent  lay  in  the  inexperience  of  our  carpen 
ters  and  masons,  not  one  of  whom  had  even  built  a  chim 
ney.  Everybody  had  fireplaces  in  pioneer  days,  in  the 
days  of  the  Kentucky  rifle,  the  broad-axe  and  the  tallow-dip  i 
but  as  the  era  of  frame  houses  came  on,  the  arches  had 
been  walled  up,  and  iron  stoves  of  varying  ugliness  had 
taken  their  places.  In  all  the  country-side  (outside  of  La- 
Crosse)  there  was  not  a  hearthstone  of  the  old-fashioned 
kind,  and  though  some  of  the  workmen  remembered  them, 
not  one  of  them  could  tell  how  they  were  constructed,  and 
the  idea  of  an  outside  chimney  was  comically  absurd. 

All  these  forces  working  against  me  had,  thus  far,  pre- 
299 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

vented  me  from  experimenting,  and  perhaps  even  now  the 
towering  base-burner  would  have  remained  our  family 
shrine  had  not  Mary  Isabel  put  in  a  wordless  plea.  Less 
than  four  hundred  days  old,  she  was,  nevertheless  wise  in 
fireplaces.  She  had  begun  to  burble  in  the  light  of  the 
Severances'  hearth  in  Minnesota,  and  her  eyes  had  reflected 
the  flame  and  shadow  of  a  noble  open  fire  in  Katherine 
Herne's  homestead  on  Peconic  Bay.  Her  cheeks  had  red 
dened  like  apples  in  the  glory  of  that  hickory  flame,  and 
when  she  came  to  our  small  apartment  in  New  York  City 
she  had  seemed  surprised  and  sadly  disappointed  by  the 
gas  pipes  and  asbestos  mat,  which  made  up  a  hollow  show 
under  a  gimcrack  mantel.  Now  here,  in  her  own  home, 
was  she  to  remain  without  the  witchery  of  crackling  flame? 

As  the  cold  winds  of  September  began  to  blow  my  reso 
lution  was  taken.  "That  fireplace  must  be  built.  My 
daughter  shall  not  be  cheated  of  beamed  ceilings  and  the 
glory  of  the  blazing  log." 

Zulime,  in  alarm,  again  cried  out  as  mother  used  to  do: 
"Consider  the  expense!" 

"Hang  the  expense!  Consider  the  comfort,  the  beauty 
of  the  embers.  Think  of  Mary  Isabel  with  her  eyes  re 
flecting  their  light.  Imagine  the  old  soldier  sitting  on  the 
hearth  holding  his  granddaughter- 
She  smiled  in  timorous  surrender.  "I  can  see  you  are 
bound  to  do  it,"  she  said,  "but  where  can  it  be  built?" 

Alas!  there  was  only  one  available  space,  a  narrow  wall 
between  the  two  west  windows.  "We'll  cut  the  windows 
down,  or  move  them,"  I  said,  with  calm  resolution. 

"I  hate  a  little  fireplace,"  protested  Zulime. 

"It  can't  be  huge,"  I  admitted,  "but  it  can  be  real.  It 
can  be  as  deep  as  we  want  it." 

Having  decided  upon  the  enterprise  I  hurried  forth  to 
engage  the  hands  to  do  the  work.  I  could  not  endure  a  day's 
delay. 

300 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

The  first  carpenter  with  whom  I  spoke  knew  nothing 
about  such  things.  The  next  one  had  helped  to  put  in  one 
small  "hard-coal,  wall  pocket,"  and  the  third  man  had  seen 
fireplaces  in  Norway,  but  remembered  little  about  their 
construction. .  After  studying  Zulime's  sketch  of  what  we 
wanted,  he  gloomily  remarked,  "I  don't  believe  I  can  make 
that  thing  gee!1 

Zulime  was  disheartened  by  all  this,  but  Mary  Isabel 
climbed  to  my  knee  as  if  to  say,  "Boppa,  where  is  my  fire 
place?" 

My  courage  returned.  "It  shall  be  built  if  I  have  to 
import  a  mason  from  Chicago,"  I  declared,  and  returned  to 
the  campaign. 

"Can't  you  build  a  thing  like  this?"  I  asked  a  plasterer, 
showing  him  a  magazine  picture  of  a  fireplace. 

He  studied  it  with  care,  turning  it  from  side  to  side.  "A 
rough  pile  o'  brick  like  that?" 

"Just  like  that." 

"Common  red  brick?" 

"Yes,  just  the  kind  you  use  for  outside  walls." 

"If  you'll  get  a  carpenter  to  lay  it  out  maybe  I  can  do 
it,"  he  answered,  but  would  fix  no  date  for  beginning  the 
work. 

Three  days  later  when  I  met  him  on  the  street  he  looked 
a  little  shame-faced.  "I  hoped  you'd  forgot  about  that 
fireplace,"  he  said.  "I  don't  know  about  that  job.  I  don't 
just  see  my  way  to  it.  However,  if  you'll  stand  by  and 
take  all  the  responsibility,  I'll  try  it." 

"When  can  you  come?" 

"To-morrow,"  he  said. 

"I'll  expect  you." 

I  hastened  home.  I  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  old  chim 
ney,  hammer  in  hand,  and  began  the  work  of  demolition. 

The  whole  household  became  involved  in  the  campaign. 
While  the  gardener  and  my  father  chipped  the  mortar  from 

301 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

the  bricks  which  I  threw  down,  Zulime  drew  another  plan 
for  the  arch  and  the  hearth,  and  Mary  Isabel  sat  on  the 
lawn,  and  shouted  at  her  busy  father,  high  in  the  sky. 

A  most  distressing  clutter  developed.  The  carpenters 
attacked  the  house  like  savage  animals,  chipping  and  chis 
eling  till  they  opened  a  huge  gap  from  window  to  window, 
filling  the  room  with  mortar,  dust  and  flies.  Zulime  was 
especially  appalled  by  the  flies. 

"I  didn't  know  you  had  to  slash  into  the  house  like  that," 
she  said.  "It's  like  murder." 

Our  neighbors  hitherto  vastly  entertained  by  our  urban 
eccentricities  expressed  an  intense  interest  in  our  plan  for 
an  open  fire.  "Do  you  expect  it  to  heat  the  house?"  asked 
Mrs.  Dutcher,  and  Aunt  Maria  said:  "An  open  fire  is  nice 
to  look  at,  but  expensive  to  keep  going." 

Sam  McKinley  heartily  applauded.  "Fm  glad  to  hear 
you're  going  back  to  the  old-fashioned  fireplace.  They 
were  good  things  to  sit  by.  I'd  like  one  myself,  but  I 
never'd  get  my  wife  to  consent.  She  says  they  are  too  much 
trouble  to  keep  in  order." 

At  last  the  mason  came,  and  together  he  and  I  laid  out 
the  ground  plan  of  the  structure.  By  means  of  bricks  dis 
posed  on  the  lawn  I  indicated  the  size  of  the  box,  and  then, 
while  the  carpenter  crawled  out  through  the  crevasse  in 
the  side  of  the  house,  we  laid  a  deep  foundation  of  stone. 
We  had  just  brought  the  base  to  the  level  of  the  sill  when — 
the  annual  County  Fair  broke  out! 

All  work  ceased.  The  workmen  went  to  the  ball  game 
and  to  the  cattle  show  and  to  the  races,  leaving  our  living- 
room  open  to  the  elements,  and  our  lawn  desolate  with 
plaster. 

For  three  days  we  suffered  this  mutilation.  At  last  the 
master  mason  returned,  but  without  his  tender.  "No  mat 
ter,"  I  said  to  him.  "I  can  mix  mortar  and  sand,"  and  I 

302 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

did.     I  also  carried  brick,  splashing  myself  with  lime  and 
skinning  my  hands, — but  the  chimney  grew! 

Painfully,  with  some  doubt  and  hesitancy,  but  with  as 
suring  skill,  Otto  laid  the  actual  firebox,  and  when  the 
dark-red,  delightfully  rude  piers  of  the  arch  began  to  rise 
from  the  floor  within  the  room,  the  entire  family  gathered 
to  admire  the  structure  and  to*  cheer  the  workmen  on  their 
way. 

The  little  inequalities  which  came  into  the  brickwork  de 
lighted  us.  These  "accidentals"  as  the  painters  say  were 
quite  as  we  wished  them  to  be.  Privately,  our  bricklayer 
considered  us — "Crazy."  The  idea  of  putting  common 
rough  brick  on  the  inside  of  a  house! 

The  library  floor  was  splotched  with  mortar,  the  dining- 
room  was  cold  and  buzzing  with  impertinent  flies,  but  what 
of  that — the  tower  of  brick  was  climbing. 

The  mason  called  insatiably  for  more  brick,  more  mortar, 
and  the  chimney  (the  only  outside  chimney  in  Hamilton 
township)  rose  grandly,  alarmingly  above  the  roof — whilst 
I  gained  a  reputation  for  princely  expenditure  which  it  will 
take  me  a  long  time  to  live  down. 

Suddenly  discovering  that  we  had  no  fire-clay  for  the 
lining  of  the  firebox,  I  ordered  it  by  express  (another  ruin 
ous  extravagance),  and  the  work  went  on.  It  was  almost 
done  when  a  cold  rain  began,  driving  the  workmen  indoors. 

Zulime  fairly  ached  with  eagerness  to  have  an  end  of  the 
mess,  and  the  mason  catching  the  spirit  of  our  unrest  worked 
on  in  the  rain.  One  by  one  the  bricks  slipped  into  place. 

"Oh,  how  beautiful  the  fire  would  be  on  a  day  like  this!" 
exclaimed  Zulime.  "Do  you  think  it  will  ever  be  finished? 
I  can't  believe  it.  It's  all  a  dream.  It  won't  draw — or 
something.  It's  too  good  to  be  true." 

"It  will  be  done  to-night — and  it  will  draw,"  I  stoutly 
replied. 

303 


A    Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

At  noon,  the  inside  being  done,  Otto  went  outside  to  com 
plete  the  top,  toiling  heroically  in  the  drizzle. 

At  last,  for  the  fourth  time  we  cleaned  the  room  of  all 
but  a  few  chips  of  the  sill,  which  I  intended  to  use  for  our 
first  blaze.  Then,  at  my  command,  Zulime  took  one  end 
of  the  thick,  rough  mantel  and  together  we  swung  it  into 
place  above  the  arch.  Our  fireplace  was  complete !  Breath 
lessly  we  waited  the  signal  to  apply  the  match. 

At  five  o'clock  the  mason  from  the  chimney  top  cheerily 
called,  "Let  'er  go!" 

Striking  a  match  I  handed  it  to  Zulime.  She  touched  it 
to  the  shavings.  Our  chimney  took  life.  It  drew!  It 
roared ! ! 

Pulling  the  curtains  close,  to  shut  out  the  waning  day 
light,  we  drew  our  chairs  about  our  hearth  whereon  the 
golden  firelight  was  playing.  We  forgot  our  troubles,  and 
Mary  Isabel  pointing  her  pink,  inch-long  forefinger  at  it, 
laughed  with  glee.  Never  again  would  she  sit  above  a  black 
hole  in  the  floor  to  warm  her  toes. 

Out  of  the  corners  of  the  room  the  mystic  ancestral  shad 
ows  leapt,  to  play  for  her  sake  upon  the  walls.  "She  will 
now  acquire  the  poet's  fund  of  sweet  subconscious  mem 
ories,"  I  declared.  "The  color  of  all  New  England  home- 
life  is  in  that  fire.  Centuries  of  history  are  involved  in  its 
flickering  shadows.  We  have  put  ourselves  in  touch  with 
our  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors  at  last." 

"It  already  looks  as  ancient  as  the  house,"  Zulime  re 
marked,  and  so  indeed  it  did,  for  its  rude  inner  walls  had 
blackened  almost  instantly,  and  its  rough,  broad,  brick 
hearth  fitted  harmoniously  into  the  brown  floor.  The  thick 
plank  mantle  (stained  a  smoky-green)  seemed  already 
clouded  with  age.  Its  expression  was  perfect — to  us,  and 
when  father  "happened  in"  and  drawing  his  armchair  for 
ward  took  Mary  Isabel  in  his  arms,  the  firelight  playing 
over  his  gray  hair  and  on  the  chubby  cheeks  of  the  child, 

304 


old  soldier  and  pioneer  loved  to  take  the  children  on  his  knees  and  bask  i 
light  of  the  fire.  At  such  times  he  made  a  picture  which  typed  forth  to  me  a 
chimney  corners  and  all  the  Anglo-Saxon  grandsires  for  a  thousand  years.  Ii 
I  saw  the  past.  In  them  I  forecast  the  future.  In  him  an  era  was  dying,  in 
Life  renewed  her  swiftly  passing  web. 


Mary    Isabel's    Chimney 

he  made  a  picture  immemorial  in  its  suggestion,  typifying 
all  the  hearths  and  all  the  grandsires  and  fair-skinned  babes 
of  New  England  history. 

The  grim  old  house  had  a  soul.  It  was  now  in  the  fullest 
sense  a  hearth  and  a  home.  Oh,  Mother  and  David,  were 
you  with  us  at  that  moment?  Did  you  look  upon  us  from 
the  dusky  corners,  adding  your  faint  voices  to  the  chorus  of 
our  songs?  I  hope  so.  I  try  to  believe  so. 

That  night  when  Mary  Isabel  was  asleep  and  I  sat  alone 
beside  the  hearth,  another  and  widely  different  magic  came 
from  those,  embers.  Their  tongues  of  flame,  subtly  inter 
fused  with  smoke,  called  back  to  memory  the  many  camp- 
fires  I  had  builded  beside  the  streams,  beneath  the  pines  of 
the  mountain  west. 

Each  of  my  tenting  places  drew  near.  At  one  moment, 
far  in  the  Skeena  Valley,  I  sat  watching  the  brave  fire  beat 
back  the  darkness  and  the  rain — hearing  a  glacial  river  roar 
ing  from  the  night.  At  another  I  was  encamped  in  the 
shelter  of  a  mighty  cliff,  listening  in  awe  while  along  its 
lofty  shelves  the  lions  prowled  and  in  the  cedars,  amid  the 
ruins  of  prehistoric  cities,  the  wind  chanted  a  solemn  rune 
filled  with  the  voices  of  those  whose  bones  had  long  since 
been  mingled  with  the  dust. 


Oh,  the  good  days  on  the  trail! 

I  cannot  lose  you — I  will  not! 

Here  in  the  amber  of  my  song 

I  hold  you. 

Here  where  neither  time  nor  change 

Can  do  you  wrong. 

I  sweep  you  together, 

The  harvest  of  a  continent.    The  gold 

Of  a  thousand  days  of  quest. 

So,  when  I  am  old, 

Like  a  chained  eagle  I  can  sit 

305 


A  Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

And  dream  and  dream 

Of  splendid  spaces, 

The  gleam  of  rivers, 

And  the  smell  of  prairie  flowers. 

So,  when  I  have  quite  forgot 

The  heritage  of  books,  I  still  shall  know 

The  splendor  of  the  mountains,  and  the  glow 

Of  sunset  on  the  vanished  plain. 


306 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-ONE 
The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

ONE  night  just  before  leaving  for  the  city,  I  invited  a 
few  of  my  father's  old  cronies  to  come  in  and  criticize 
my  new  chimney.  They  all  came, — Lottridge,  Stevens, 
Shane,  Johnson,  McKinley,  all  the  men  who  meant  the  most 
to  my  sire,  and  as  they  took  seats  about  the  glowing  hearth, 
the  most  matter-of-fact  of  them  warmed  to  its  poetic  asso 
ciations,  and  the  sternest  of  them  softened  in  face  and  tone 
beneath  its  magic  light. 

Each  began  by  saying,  "An  open  fire  is  nice  to  sit  by,  but 
not  much  good  as  a  means  of  heating  the  house,"  and  having 
made  this  concession  to  the  practical,  they  each  and  all 
passed  to  minute  and  loving  descriptions  of  just  the  kind  of 
fireplaces  their  people  used  to  have  back  in  Connecticut  or 
Maine  or  Vermont.  Stevens  described  the  ancestral  oven, 
Lottridge  told  of  the  family  hob  and  crane,  and  throughout 
all  this  talk  a  note  of  wistful  tenderness  ran.  They  were 
stirred  to  their  depths  and  yet  concealed  it.  Not  one  had 
the  courage  to  build  such  a  chimney  but  every  man  of  them 
covertly  longed  for  it,  dimly  perceiving  its  value  as  an  altar 
of  memory,  unconsciously  acknowledging  its  poignant 
youthful  associations.  The  beauty  of  vanished  faces,  the 
forms  of  the  buried  past  drew  near,  and  in  the  golden  light 
of  reminiscent  dream,  each  grizzled  head  took  on  a  softer, 
nobler  outline.  The  prosaic  was  forgot.  The  poetry  of 
their  lives  was  restored. 

Father  was  at  his  best,  hospitable,  reminiscent,  jocund. 

307 


A   Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

His  pride  in  me  was  expressed  in  his  faith  in  my  ability  to 
keep  this  fire  going. 

"Hamlin  don't  mind  a  little  expense  like  this  chimney," 
he  said.  "He  put  it  in  just  to  amuse  the  baby, — so  he  says 
and  I  believe  him.  He  can  afford  it — so  I'm  not  saying  a 
word,  in  fact  I  like  an  open  fire  so  well  I'm  thinking  of 
putting  one  into  my  own  house." 

To  this  several  replied  by  saying,  "We'd  have  a  riot  in 
our  house  if  we  put  in  such  an  extravagance."  Others  de 
clared,  "It's  all  a  question  of  dirt.  Our  wives  would  never 
stand  the  ashes." 

We  had  provided  apples  and  nuts,  doughnuts,  cider  and 
other  characteristic  refreshments  of  the  older  day,  but  alas! 
most  of  our  guests  no  longer  took  coffee  at  night,  and  only 
one  or  two  had  teeth  for  popcorn  or  stomach  for  doughnuts. 
As  a  feast  our  evening  was  a  failure. 

"I  used  to  eat  anything  at  any  time,"  Lottridge  explained, 
"probably  that  is  the  reason  why  I  can't  do  it  now.  In 
those  days  we  didn't  know  anything  about  'calories'  or 
'balanced  rations.'  We  et  what  was  set  before  us  and  darn 
glad  to  get  it." 

Shane  with  quiet  humor  recalled  the  days  when  buck 
wheat  cakes  and  sausages  swimming  in  pork  fat  and  cov 
ered  with  maple  syrup,  formed  his  notion  of  a  good  break 
fast.  "Just  one  such  meal  would  finish  me  now,"  he  added 
with  a  rueful  smile. 

These  were  the  men  who  had  been  the  tireless  reapers,  the 
skilled  wood-choppers,  the  husky  threshers  of  the  olden 
time,  and  as  they  talked,  each  of  them  reverting  to  signifi 
cant  events  in  those  heroic  days,  I  sobered  with  a  sense  of 
irreparable  loss.  Pathos  and  humor  mingled  in  their  talk 
of  those  far  days! 

Shane  said,  "Remember  the  time  I  'bushed'  you  over  in 
Dunlap's  meadow?"  To  this  my  father  scornfully  replied, 
"You  bushed  me!  I  can  see  you,  now,  sitting  there  under 

308 


The    Fairy     World    of     Childhood 

that  oak  tree  mopping  your  red  face.  I  had  you  'petered' 
before  ten  o'clock." 

It  all  came  back  as  they  talked,— that  buoyant  world  of 
the  reaper  and  the  binder,  when  harvesting  was  a  kind  of 
Homeric  game  in  which,  with  rake  and  scythe,  these  lusty 
young  sons  of  the  East  contended  for  supremacy  in  the  field. 
"None  of  us  had  an  extra  dollar,"  explained  Stevens,  "but 
each  of  us  had  what  was  better,  good  health  and  a  faith  in 
the  future.  Not  one  of  us  had  any  intention  of  growing 
old." 

"Old!  There  weren't  any  old  people  in  those  days,"  as 
serted  Lottridge. 

Along  about  the  middle  of  the  evening  they  all  turned 
in  on  a  game  of  "Rummy,"  finding  in  cards  a  welcome  relief 
from  the  unexpressed  torment  of  the  contrast  between  their 
decrepit,  hopeless  present  and  the  glowing,  glorious  past. 

My  departure  on  a  lecture  trip  at  ten  o'clock  disturbed 
their  game  only  for  a  moment,  and  as  I  rode  away  I  con 
trasted  the  noble  sanity  and  the  high  courage  of  those  white- 
haired  veterans  of  the  Border,  with  the  attitude  of  certain 
types  of  city  men  I  knew.  Facing  death  at  something  less 
than  arm's  length,  my  father  and  his  fellows  nevertheless 
remained  wholesomely  interested  in  life.  None  of  them  were 
pious,  some  of  them  were  not  even  religious,  but  they  all 
had  a  sturdy  faith  in  the  essential  justice  of  the  universe. 
They  were  still  playing  the  game  as  best  they  knew. 

Like  Eugene  Ware  they  could  say — 

"Standing  by  life's  river,  deep  and  broad, 
I  take  my  chances,  ignorant  but  unawed." 

As  I  sat  among  my  fellow  members  at  the  Club,  three 
days  later,  I  again  recalled  my  father  and  his  group.  Here, 
too,  I  was  in  the  Zone  of  Age.  A.  M.  Palmer,  a  feeble  and 
melancholy  old  man,  came  in  and  wandered  about  with  none 

309 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

to  do  him  reverence,  and  St.  Gaudens,  who  was  in  the  city 
for  medical  treatment,  shared  his  dry  toast  and  his  cereal 
coffee  with  me  of  a  morning.  George  Warner,  who  kept 
a  cheerful  countenance,  admitted  that  he  did  so  by  effort. 
"I  don't  like  the  thought  of  leaving  this  good  old  earth,"  he 
confessed  one  afternoon.  "It  gives  me  a  pang  every  time  I 
•  consider  it."  None  of  these  men  faced  death  with  finer 
courage  than  my  sire. 

As  I  had  a  good  deal  of  free  time  in  the  afternoon,  and 
as  I  also  had  a  room  at  the  Club,  I  saw  much  of  St. 
Gaudens.  We  really  became  acquainted.  One  morning  as 
we  met  at  breakfast  he  replied  to  my  question  with  a  groan 
and  a  mild  cuss  word:  "Worse,  thank  you!  I've  just  been  to 
Washington,  and  on  the  train  last  night  I  ate  ice-cream  for 
dinner.  I  knew  I'd  regret  it,  but  ice-cream  is  my  weakness." 
He  was  at  once  humorous  and  savage  for,  as  he  explained, 
"the  doctor  will  not  let  me  work  and  there  is  nothing  for 
me  to  do  but  sit  around  the  Club  library  and  read  or  write 
letters." 

He  wrote  almost  as  many  letters  as  I  did,  and  so  we  often 
faced  each  other  across  a  desk  in  the  writing  room.  Some 
times  he  spoke  of  President  Roosevelt  who  was  employing 
him  on  the  new  designs  for  our  coins,  sometimes  he  alluded 
to  the  work  awaiting  him  in  his  studio.  Oh!  how  homesick 
we  both  were!  Perhaps  he  felt  the  near  approach  of  the 
hour  when  his  cunning  hand  must  drop  its  tool.  I  know 
the  thought  came  to  me,  creating  a  tenderer  feeling  toward 
him.  I  saw  him  in  a  sorrowful  light.  He  drew  nearer  to 
me,  seeming  more  like  a  friend  and  neighbor. 

I  have  said  that  I  had  a  good  deal  of  time  on  my  hands, 
and  so  it  seemed  to  me  then  and  yet  during  this  trip  I 
visited  many  of  my  friends,  prepared  The  Tyranny  of  the 
Dark  for  serial  publication,  attended  a  dinner  to  Henry 
James,  was  one  of  the  Guests  of  Honor  at  the  Camp  Fir$ 
Club  and  acted  as  teller  (with  Hopkinson  Smith)  in  the 

310 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

election  which  founded  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Letters — a  fairly  full  program  as  I  look  back  upon  it,  but 
I  had  a  great  many  hours  to  spend  in  writing  to  Zulime 
and  in  dreaming  about  Mary  Isabel.  In  spite  of  all  my 
noble  companions,  my  dinners,  speeches  and  honors  I  was 
longing  for  my  little  daughter  and  her  fireplace,  and  at 
last  I  put  aside  all  invitations  and  took  the  westward  trail, 
counting  the  hours  which  intervened  between  my  laggard 
coach  and  home. 

At  times  I  realized  the  danger  which  lay  in  building  so 
much  of  my  content  on  the  life  of  one  small  creature,  but 
for  the  most  part  I  rejoiced  in  the  fact  that  she  was  in  my 
world,  even  though  I  had  a  growing  sense  of  its  illusory  and 
generally  unsatisfactory  character.  I  found  comfort  in  the 
knowledge  that  billions  of  other  men  had  preceded  me 
and  billions  more  would  follow  me,  and  that  the  only  real 
things  in  my  world  were  the  human  relationships.  To 
make  my  wife  and  child  happy,  to  leave  the  world  a  little 
better  than  I  found  it,  these  formed  my  creed. 

It  was  cold,  crisp,  clear  winter  when  I  returned  to  West 
Salem  and  the  village  again  suggested  a  Christmas  card 
illustration  as  I  walked  up  the  street.  The  snow  cried  out 
under  my  shoe  soles  with  shrill  familiar  squeal,  carrying  me 
back  to  the  radiant  *nornings  in  Iowa  when  I  trod  the  board 
walks  of  Osage  on  my  way  to  the  Seminary  Chapel,  my 
books  under  my  arm  and  the  courage  of  youth  in  my  heart. 
Now  a  wife  and  daughter  awaited  me. 

A  fire  was  crackling  in  the  new  chimney,  and  in  the  light 
of  it,  at  her  mother's  feet,  sat  Mary  Isabel.  In  a  moment 
New  York  and  Chicago  were  remote,  almost  mythic  places. 
With  my  child  in  my  arms,  listening  to  Zulime's  gossip  of 
the  town  wherein  the  simple  old-fashioned  joys  of  life 
still  persisted  with  wholesome  effect,  I  asked  myself,  "Why 
struggle?  Why  travel,  when  your  wife,  your  babe,  and  your 
hearthstone  are  here? 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

"Once  I  threatened  the  world  with  fire, 
And  thrust  my  fist  in  the  face  of  wrong, 
Making  my  heart  a  sounding  lyre — 
Accusing  the  rulers  of  earth  in  song. 
Now,  counting  the  world  of  creeds  well  lost 
And  recking  the  greatest  book  no  prize — 
Withdrawn  from  the  press  and  free  from  the  cost 
Of  fame  and  war — in  my  baby's  eyes — 
In  the  touch  of  her  tiny,  slender  palm, 
I  find  the  ease  of  a  warrior's  calm." 

Calm!  Did  I  say  calm?  It  was  the  calm  of  abject 
slavery.  At  command  of  that  minute  despot  I  began  to  toil 
frenziedly.  At  her  word  I  read  over  and  over,  and  over  once 
again,  the  Rhymes  of  Mother  Goose  and  the  Tales  of 
Peter  Wabbitt.  The  Tin  Tan  Book  was  her  litany,  and 
Red  Riding  Hood  her  sweet  terror.  Her  interest  in  books 
was  insatiate.  She  loved  all  verses,  all  melodies,  even  those 
whose  words  were  wholly  beyond  her  understanding,  and 
her  rapt  eyes,  deep  and  dark,  as  my  mother's  had  been, 
gave  me  such  happiness  that  to  write  of  it  fills  me  with  a 
pang  of  regret — for  that  baby  is  now  a  woman. 

It  will  not  avail  my  reader  to  say,  "You  were  but  re- 
enacting  the  experiences  of  innumerable  other  daddies,"  for 
this  was  my  child,  these  were  my  home  and  my  fire.  With 
out  a  shred  of  shame  I  rejoiced  in  my  subjection  then,  as 
I  long  to  recover  its  contentment  now.  Life  for  me  was  ful 
filled.  I  was  doing  that  which  nature  and  the  world  re 
quired. 

Here  enters  an  incongruous  fact, — something  which  I 
must  record  with  the  particularity  it  deserves.  My  wife 
who  was  accounted  a  genius,  was  in  truth  amazingly  "clever" 
with  brush  and  pencil.  Not  only  had  she  spent  five  years 
in  Paris,  she  had  enjoyed  several  other  years  of  study 
with  her  sculptor  brother.  She  could  model,  she  could 
paint  and  she  could  draw, — but — to  whom  did  Mary  Isabel 
turn  when  she  wanted  a  picture?  To  her  artist  mother? 

312 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

Not  at  all !  To  me, — to  her  corn-husker  daddy — of  course. 
I  was  her  artist  as  well  as  her  reader. 

To  her  my  hand  was  a  wonder-worker.  She  was  always 
pleased  with  what  I  did.  Hour  after  hour  I  drew  (in 
amazing  outlines)  dogs  and  cows  and  pigs  (pictographs  as 
primitive  as  those  which  line  the  walls  of  cave  dwellings  in 
Arizona)  on  which  she  gazed  in  ecstasy,  silent  till  she  sud 
denly  discovered  that  this  effigy  meant  a  cow,  then  she  cried 
out,  "tee  dee  moomo!"  with  a  joy  which  afforded  me  more 
satisfaction  than  any  acceptance  of  a  story  on  the  part  of 
an  editor  had  ever  conveyed.  Each  scrawl  was  to  her  a 
fresh  revelation  of  the  omniscience,  the  magic  of  her  father 
— therefore  I  drew  and  drew  while  her  recreant  mother  sat 
on  the  other  side  of  the  fire  and  watched  us,  a  wicked  smile 
of  amusement — and  relief — on  her  lips. 

My  daughter  was  preternaturally  interested  in  magazines, 
— that  is  to  say  she  was  (at  a  very  early  age)  vitally  con 
cerned  with  the  advertising  columns,  and  forced  me  to 
spend  a  great  deal  of  time  turning  the  pages  while  she  dis 
covered  and  admired  the  images  of  shoes,  chairs,  tables  and 
babies, — especially  babies.  It  rejoiced  her  to  discover  in 
a  book  the  portrait  of  a  desk  which  was  actually  standing 
in  the  room,  and  in  matching  the  fact  with  the  artistic 
reproduction  of  the  fact,  she  was,  no  doubt,  laying  the 
foundation  of  an  esthetic  appreciation  of  the  universe,  but  I 
suffered.  Only  when  she  was  hungry  or  sleepy  did  she 
permit  me,  her  art  instructor,  to  take  a  vacation, 

In  the  peaceful  intervals  when  she  was  in  her  bed,  her 
mother  and  I  discussed  the  question,  "Where  shall  we 
make  our  winter  home?" 

My  plan  to  take  another  apartment  in  New  York  seemed 
of  a  reckless  extravagance  to  Zulime,  who  argued  for  Chi 
cago,  and  in  the  end  we  compromised — on  Chicago — where 
her  father  and  brother  and  sister  lived.  November  found 
us  settled  in  a  furnished  apartment  on  Jackson  Park  Ave- 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

nue,  and  our  Christmas  tree  was  set  up  there  instead  of  in 
the  Homestead,  which  was  the  natural  place  for  it. 

Another  phase  of  being  Daddy  now  set  in.  To  me,  as  a 
father,  the  City  by  the  Lake  assumed  a  new  and  terrifying 
aspect.  Its  dirt,  its  chill  winds,  its  smoke  appeared  a 
pitiless  league  of  forces  assaulting  the  tender  form  of  my 
daughter.  My  interest  in  civic  reforms  augmented.  The 
problems  of  street  cleaning  and  sanitary  milk  delivery  ap 
proached  me  from  an  entirely  different  angle.  My  sense  of 
social  justice  was  quickened. 

In  other  ways  I  admitted  a  change.  Something  had 
gone  out  of  my  world,  or  rather  something  unexpected  had 
come  into  it.  I  was  no  longer  whole-hearted  in  my  enjoy 
ment  of  my  Club.  My  study  hours  were  no  longer  sacred. 
My  cherub  daughter  allured.  Sometimes  as  I  was  dozing 
in  my  sleeping  car,  I  heard  her  chirping  voice,  "Bappa, 
come  here.  I  need  you."  The  memory  of  her  small  soft 
body,  her  trusting  eyes,  the  arch  of  her  brows,  made  me 
impatient  of  my  lecture  tours.  She  was  my  incentive,  my 
chief  reason  for  living  and  working,  and  from  each  of  my 
predatory  sorties,  I  returned  to  her  with  a  thankfulness 
which  was  almost  maudlin — in  Fuller's  eyes.  To  have  her 
joyous  face  lifted  to  mine,  to  hear  her  clear  voice  repeating 
my  mother's  songs,  restored  my  faith  in  the  logic  of  human 
life.  True  she  interrupted  my  work  and  divided  my  in 
terest,  but  she  also  defended  me  from  bitterness  and  kept 
me  from  a  darkening  outlook  on  the  future.  My  right  to 
have  her  could  be  questioned  but  my  care  of  her,  now 
that  I  had  her,  was  a  joyous  task. 

It  would  not  be  quite  honest  in  me  if  I  did  not  admit 
that  this  intensity  of  interest  in  my  daughter  took  away 
something  from  my  attitude  as  a  husband,  just  as  Zulime's 
mother  love  affected  her  relationship  to  me.  A  new  law 
was  at  work  in  both  our  cases,  and  I  do  not  question  its 
necessity  or  its  direction.  Three  is  a  larger  number  than 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

two,  and  if  the  third  number  brings  something  unforeseen 
into  the  problem  it  must  be  accepted.  Mary  Isabel 
strengthened  the  bond  between  Zulime  and  myself,  but  it 
altered  its  character.  Whatever  it  lost  in  one  way  it  gained 
in  another. 

Dear  little  daughter,  how  she  possessed  me!  Each  day 
she  presented  some  new  trait,  some  new  accomplishment. 
She  had  begun  to  understand  that  Daddy  was  a  writer  and 
that  he  must  not  be  disturbed  during  the  morning,  but  in 
spite  of  her  best  resolutions  she  often  tip-toed  to  my  door  to 
inquire  brightly,  "Poppie,  can  I  come  in?  Don't  you  want 
me?"  Of  course  I  wanted  her,  and  so  frequently  my  work 
gave  place  to  a  romp  with  her.  In  the  afternoons  I  often 
took  her  for  a  walk  or  to  coast  on  her  new  sled  rejoicing 
in  the  picture  she  made  in  her  red  cloak  and  hood. 

In  her  presence  my  somber  conceptions  of  life  were  for 
gotten.  Joyous  and  vital,  knowing  nothing  of  my  worries, 
she  comforted  me.  She  was  no  longer  the  "baby"  she  was 
"Wenona,"  my  first  born,  and  in  spirit  we  were  comrades. 
More  and  more  she  absorbed  my  thought.  "Poppie,  I  love 
you  better  than  anything,"  she  often  said,  and  the  music 
of  her  voice  misted  my  eyes  and  put  a  lump  into  my  throat. 

When  summer  came  and  we  went  back  to  the  Home- 
stead,  I  taught  her  to  drive  Old  Smoker,  Uncle  William's 
horse.  Under  my  direction  she  studied  the  birds  and  ani 
mals.  In  city  and  country  alike  we  came  together  at  night 
fall,  to  read  or  sing  or  "play  circus."  I  sang  to  her  all  the 
songs  my  mother  had  taught  me,  I  danced  with  her  as  she 
grew  older,  with  Zulime  playing  the  tunes  for  us,  "Money 
Musk"  and  "The  Campbells  are  Coming."  As  we  walked 
the  streets  the  trusting  cling  of  her  tiny  fingers  was  in 
expressibly  sweet. 

"Poppie,  I'm  so  happy!"  she  often  said  to  me  after  she 
was  three,  and  the  ecstasy  which  showed  in  her  big  blue 
eyes  scared  me  with  its  intensity  for  I  knew  all  too  well 


A    Daughter    of   the   Middle   Border 

that  it  could  not  last.  This  was  her  magical  time.  She 
4  was  enraptured  of  the  wind  and  sky  and  the  grass.  Every 
fact  in  nature  was  a  revelation  to  her. 

"Why,  Poppie?  What  does  it?  What  was  that  noise?" 
The  dandelions,  the  dead  bird,  a  snake — these  were  miracles 
to  her — as  they  once  were  to  me.  She  believed  in  fairies 
with  devotional  fervor  and  I  did  nothing  to  shake  her  faith, 
on  the  contrary  I  would  gladly  have  shared  her  credence  if 
I  could. 

Once  as  we  were  entering  a  deep,  dark  wood,  she  cau 
tioned  me  to  walk  very  softly  and  to  speak  in  a  whisper 
.  in  order  that  we  might  catch  the  Forest  Folk  at  play, 
and  as  we  trod  a  specially  beautiful  forest  aisle  she  cried 
out,  "I  saw  one,  Poppie!  Didn't  you  see  that  little  shining 
thing?" 

I  could  only  say,  "Yes,  it  must  have  been  a  fairy."  I 
would  not  destroy  her  illusion. 

She  inhabited  a  world  of  ineffable  beauty,  a  universe  in 
which  minute  exquisite  winged  creatures  flashed  like  flakes 
of  fire,  through  dusky  places.  She  heard  their  small  faint 
voices  in  the  whisper  of  the  leaves,  and  every  broad  toad 
stool  was  to  her  a  resting  place  for  weary  elfin  messengers 
hurrying  on  some  mission  for  their  queen.  Her  own  im 
aginings,  like  her  favorite  books,  were  all  of  magic  wands, 
golden  garments  and  crystal  palaces.  Sceptered  kings,  and 
jeweled  princesses  trailing  robes  of  satin  were  the  chief 
actors  in  her  dreams. 

I  am  aware  that  many  educators  consider  such  reading 
foolish  and  harmful,  but  I  care  nothing  for  wire-drawn 
pedagogic  theories.  That  I  did  nothing  to  mar  the  mystical 
4  beauty  of  the  world  in  which  my  daughter  then  dwelt,  is  my 
present  satisfaction,  and  I  shamelessly  acknowledge  that  I 
experienced  keen  pangs  of  regret  as  her  tender  illusions, 
one  after  another  faded  into  the  chill  white  light  of  later 

316 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

day.  Without  actually  deceiving  her,  I  permitted  her  to 
believe  that  I  too,  heard  the  wondrous  voices  of  Titania  and 
her  elves  in  convention  behind  the  rose  bush,  or  the  whis 
pers  of  gnomes  hiding  among  the  cornrows. 

Good  republican  that  I  was,  I  listened  without  reproof  to 
her  adoring  fealty  to  Kings  and  Queens.  Her  love  of 
Knights  and  tournaments  was  openly  fostered  at  my  hand. 
"If  she  should  die  out  of  this,  her  glorious  imaginary  world, 
she  shall  die  happy,"  was  my  thought,  "and  if  she  lives  to 
look  back  upon  it  with  a  woman's  eyes,  she  shall  remember 
it  as  a  shining  world  in  which  her  Daddy  was  a  rough  but 
kindly  councillor,  a  mortal  of  whom  no  fairy  need  have 
fear." 

The  circus  was  my  daughter's  royal  tournament,  an  as 
semblage  of  all  the  kings  and  queens,  knights  and  fairies  of 
her  story  books.  She  hated  the  clowns  but  the  parade  of 
the  warriors  and  their  sovereign  exalted  her.  The  helmeted 
spearmen,  the  lithe  charioteers,  the  hooded  drivers  sitting 
astride  the  heads  of  vast  elephants  were  characters  of  the 
Arabian  Nights,  passing  veritably  before  her  eyes.  The 
winged  dancers  of  the  spectacle  came  straight  from  the  cas 
tle  of  Queen  Mab,  the  pale  acrobats  were  brothers  to 
Hector  and  Achilles. 

As  she  watched  them  pass  she  gripped  my  hand  as  if  to 
keep  touch  with  reality,  her  little  heart  swollen  with  almost 
intolerable  delight.  "It  makes  me  shiver,"  she  whispered, 
and  I  understood. 

As  the  last  horseman  of  the  procession  was  passing,  she 
asked  faintly — "Will  it  come  again,  Poppie?" 

"Yes,  it  will  come  once  more,"  I  replied,  recalling  my  own 
sense  of  loss  when  the  Grand  Entry  was  over. 

As  the  queen,  haughty  of  glance,  superb  in  her  robe  of 
silver  once  more  neared  us,  indolently  swaying  to  the  move 
ment  of  the  elephant,  who  bore  his  housings  of  purple  and 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

gold  with  stately  solemnity,  my  daughter's  tiny  body  quiv 
ered  with  ecstasy  and  her  beautiful  eyes  dilated  with  an 
intensity  of  admiration,  of  worship  which  made  me  sad  as 
well  as  happy,  and  then  just  as  the  resplendent  princess  was 
passing  for  the  last  time,  Mary  Isabel  rose  in  her  place 
and  waving  a  kiss  to  her  liege  lady  cried  out  in  tones  of 
poignant  love  and  despair,  "Good-by,  dear  Queen!"  and  I, 
holding  her  tender  palpitant  figure  in  my  arms,  heard  in  that 
slender  silver-sweet  cry  the  lament  of  childhood,  childhood 
whose  dreams  were  passing  never  to  return. 

Chicago  did  not  offer  much  by  way  of  magnificence  but 
Mary  Isabel  made  the  most  of  what  we  took  her  to  see. 
The  gold  room  of  the  hotel  was  a  part  of  her  imaginary 
kingdom,  conceivably  the  home  of  royalty.  Standing  tim 
idly  at  the  door,  she  surveyed  the  golden  chairs,  the  gor 
geous  ceiling  and  the  deep-toned  pictures  with  a  gaze  which 
absorbed  every  detail.  At  last  she  whispered,  "Is  this  the 
Queen's  room?" 

"Yes,"  I  replied.  "If  the  Queen  should  come  to  Chicago 
she  would  live  here,"  and  I  comforted  myself  by  saying, 
"You  shall  have  your  hour  of  wonder  and  romance,  even 
at  the  expense  of  a  prevarication." 

With  a  sigh  she  turned  away,  or  rather  permitted  me  to 
lead  her  away.  "I'm  glad  I  saw  it,"  she  said.  "Will  the 
Queen  ever  come  to  Chicago  again?" 

"Yes,  next  spring  she  will  come  again,"  I  answered,  thus 
feeding  her  illusion  without  a  moment's  hesitation  or  a 
particle  of  remorse. 

Her  love  of  royal  robes,  gold  chariots  and  Queens'  houses 
did  not  prevent  her  from  listening  with  deep  delight  while 
I  read  Jock  Johnstone,  the  Tinkler  Lad,  or  sang  O'er  the 
Hills  in  Legions,  Boys.  She  loved  most  of  the  songs  I  was 
accustomed  to  sing  but  certain  of  the  lines  vaguely  dis 
tressed  her.  She  could  not  endure  the  pathos  of  Nellie  Gray. 


The    Fairy    World    of    Childhood 

"Oh,  my  poor  Nellie  Gray 
They  have  taken  you  away 
And  I'll  never  see  my  darling  any  more" 

put  her  into  deepest  anguish. 

"Why  did  they  take  her  away?"  she  sobbed.  "Didn't 
they  ever  see  her  any  more?" 

Only  after  I  explained  that  they  met  "down  the  river" 
and  were  very  happy  ever  afterward,  would  she  permit  me 
to  finish  the  ballad.  She  was  similarly  troubled  by  the 
words, 

"I  can  hear  the  children  calling 
I  can  see  their  sad  tears  falling." 

"Why  are  the  children  calling?"  she  demanded. 

She  had  a  curious  horror  of  anything  abnormal.  Once 
I  took  her  to  see  "Alice  in  Wonderland"  thinking  that  this 
would  be  an  enchanting  experience  for  her.  Not  only  was 
it  intolerably  repellent  to  her,  it  was  terrifying,  and  when 
the  bodies  of  the  characters  suddenly  lengthened,  she 
sought  refuge  under  the  seat.  All  deformities,  grotesqueries 
were  to  her  horrible,  appalling.  She  refused  to  look  at  the 
actors  and  at  last  I  took  her  away. 

One  afternoon  as  we  were  in  the  garden  together  she 
called  to  me.  "Poppie,  see  the  dead  birdie!" 

On  looking  I  saw  a  little  dead  song  sparrow.  "It's 
been  here  all  the  night  and  all  the  day,  Poppie.  It  fell  out 
of  the  tree  when  Eddie  snooted  it.  Put  it  up  in  the  tree 
again,  Poppie." 

She  seemed  to  think  that  if  it  were  put  back  into  its  home 
it  would  go  on  living  and  singing.  I  don't  know  why  this 
should  have  moved  me  as  it  did,  but  it  blurred  my  eyes  for 
a  moment.  My  little  daughter  was  face  to  face  with  the 
great  mystery. 

O  those  magical  days!  Knowing  all  too  well  that  they 
could  not  last  and  that  to  lose  any  part  of  them  was  to  be 


A    Daughter    of    the    Middle    Border 

forever  cheated,  I  gave  my  time  to  her.  Over  and  over 
again  as  I  met  her  deep  serene  glance,  I  asked  (as  other 
parents  have  done),  "Whence  came  you?  From  what 
dusky  night  rose  your  starry  eyes?  Out  of  what  unil- 
lumined  void  flowered  your  fairy  face?  Can  it  be,  as  some 
have  said,  that  you  are  only  an  automaton,  a  physical  re 
action?" 

She  was  the  future,  my  father  the  past.  Birth  and  death, 
equally  inexplicable,  were  expressed  to  me  in  these  two 
beings,  so  vital  to  me,  so  dependent  upon  me,  and  beside 
me,  suffering,  joying  with  me,  walked  the  mother  with 
unfaltering  steps. 

I  was  in  the  midst  of  a  novel  at  this  time,  another  story 
of  Colorado,  which  I  called  Money  Magic,  and  without 
doubt  all  this  distraction  and  travel  weakened  it,  although 
Howells  spoke  well  of  it.  "It  is  one  of  your  best  books," 
he  said,  when  we  next  met. 

[Mary  Isabel  reads  the  book  at  intervals  and  places  it 
next  to  Hesper  and  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop.] 

Marriage,  paternity,  householding,  during  these  years  un 
questionably  put  the  brakes  on  my  work  as  a  writer,  but  I 
had  no  desire  to  return  to  bachelorhood.  Undoubtedly 
I  had  lost  something,  but  I  had  gained  more.  As  a  human 
being  I  was  enriched  beyond  my  deserving  by  a  wife  and 
a  child. 

Perhaps  I  would  have  gone  farther  and  mounted  higher 
as  a  selfish  solitary  bachelor,  but  that  did  not  trouble  me 
then,  and  does  not  now.  Concerned  with  the  problem  of 
providing  a  comfortable  winter  home  for  my  family,  and 
happy  in  maintaining  the  old  house  in  West  Salem  as  a 
monument  to  the  memory  of  my  mother,  I  wrote,  com 
mitted  carpentry  and  lectured. 

My  frequent  absences  from  home  soon  made  a  deep  im 
pression  on  my  daughter's  mind,  and  whenever  she  was 
naughty  I  had  but  to  say,  "If  you  do  that  again  Papa  will  go 

320 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

away  to  New  York,"  and  she  would  instantly  say,  "Pm 

doodie  now  papa,  I'm  doodie "  and  yet  my  mention  of 

going  to  New  York  could  not  have  been  altogether  a  punish 
ment  for  I  always  brought  to  her  some  toy  or  book.  Nothing 
afforded  me  keener  joy  than  the  moment  when  I  showed  her 
the  presents  I  had  brought. 

The  fact  that  she  loved  to  have  her  heavy-handed  old 
Daddy  near  her,  was  a  kind  of  miracle,  a  concession  for 
which  I  could  not  be  too  grateful. 

"You  shall  have  a  happy  childhood,"  I  vowed,  "no  matter 
what  comes  later,  you  shall  remember  these  days  with  un 
alloyed  delight.  They  shall  be  your  heaven,  your  fairy 
land." 

Each  month  I  set  down  in  my  diary  some  new  phrase, 
some  development,  some  significant  event  in  her  life,  and 
when  she  found  this  out  she  loved  to  have  me  read  what 
she  had  said,  "When  I  was  a  little  baby."  She  listened 
gravely,  contrasting  her  ignorance  at  two  with  her  wisdom 
at  five.  "Was  I  cute,  Daddy?  Did  you  like  me  then?" 
she  would  ask. 

She  early  learned  the  meaning  of  Decoration  Day,  which 
she  called  "Flag  Day,"  and  took  pride  in  the  fact  that  her 
grand-sire  was  a  soldier.  Each  year  she  called  for  her  flag 
and  asked  to  be  taken  to  the  cemetery  to  see  the  decora 
tions  and  to  hear  the  bugles  blow  above  the  graves,  and  I 
always  complied;  although  to  me,  each  year,  a  more  poig 
nant  pathos  quavered  in  the  wailing  cadence  of  "Lights 
out,"  and  the  passing  of  the  veterans,  thinning  so  rapidly — • 
was  like  the  march  of  men  toward  their  open  graves. 

Happily  my  daughter  did  not  realize  any  part  of  this 
tragic  concept.  For  her  it  was  natural  that  a  soldier  should 
be  old  and  bent.  Waving  her  little  flag  and  shouting  with 
silver-sweet  voice  she  saluted  with  vague  admiration  those 
who  were  about  to  die — an  age  about  to  die — and  in  her 
eyes  flamed  the  spirit  of  her  grand-sire,  the  love  of  country 

321 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

which  will  carry  the  Republic  through  every  storm  no 
matter  from  which  quarter  the  wind  may  spring. 

So  far  as  I  could,  I  taught  her  to  take  up  the  traditions 
which  were  about  to  slip  from  the  hands  of  Richard  Gar 
land  and  his  sons,  "She  shall  be  our  representative,  the 
custodian  of  our  faith." 

For  four  years  she  remained  our  only  child,  and  yet  I 
.  can  not  say  that  she  was  either  spoiled  or  exacting,  on  the 
contrary  she  was  a  constant,  joyous  pupil  and  a  lovely  ap 
pealing  teacher.  Through  her  I  rediscovered  the  wonder  of 
the  sunrise  and  the  stars.  In  the  study  of  her  face  the 
lost  beauty  of  the  rainbow  returned  to  me,  in  her  presence 
I  felt  once  more  the  mystic  charm  of  dusk.  I  reaccepted 
the  universe,  putting  aside  the  measureless  horror  of  its 
recorded  wars.  I  grew  strangely  selfish.  My  interests  nar 
rowed  to  my  own  country,  my  own  home,  to  my  fireside. 
Counting  upon  the  world  well  lost,  I  built  upon  my  daugh 
ter's  love. 

That  my  wife  was  equally  happy  in  her  parentage  was 
obvious  for  at  times  she  treated  Mary  Isabel  as  if  she  were 
a  doll,  spending  many  hours  of  many  days  designing  dainty 
gowns  and  hoods  for  her  delight.  She  could  hardly  be 
separated  from  the  child,  even  for  a  night  and  it  was  in  her 
battles  with  croup  and  other  nocturnal  enemies  that  her 
maternal  love  was  tested  to  the  full.  I  do  not  assume  to 
know  what  she  felt  as  a  wife,  but  of  her  devotion  as  a 
mother  I  am  able  to  write  with  certainty.  On  her  fell  the 
burden  of  those  hours  of  sickness  in  the  city,  and  when  the 
time  came  for  us  to  go  back  to  the  birds  and  trees  of  our 
beloved  valley  she  rejoiced  as  openly  as  her  daughter. 
"Now  we  shall  be  free  of  colds  and  fever,"  she  said. 

For  the  most  part  this  was  true.  For  several  summers 
our  daughter  lived  and  throve  at  her  birthplace,  free  of 
pain  and  in  idyllic  security — and  then  suddenly,  one  Sep 
tember  day,  like  the  chill  shadow  from  an  Autumn  storm- 

322 


Entirely  subject  to  my  daughter,  who  regarded  me  as  a  wonder 
working  giant,  I  paid  tribute  to  her  in  song,  in  story,  and  in 
frankincense  and  myrrh.  Led  by  her  trusting  little  hand  I 
re-discovered  the  haunts  of  fairies  and  explored  once  more 
the  land  beneath  the  rainbow. 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

cloud,  misfortune  fell  upon  us.  Our  daughter  became  sick, 
how  sick  I  did  not  realize  until  on  the  eighth  day  as  I  took 
her  in  my  arms  I  discovered  in  her  a  horrifying  weakness. 
Her  little  body,  thinned  with  fever,  hung  so  laxly,  so  lightly 
on  my  knee  that  my  blood  chilled  with  sudden  terror. 

With  a  conviction  that  I  dared  not  even  admit  to  myself, 
I  put  her  back  into  her  mother's  keeping  and  hurried  to 
the  telephone.  In  ten  minutes  I  had  called  to  her  aid  the 
best  medical  men  of  the  region.  Especially  did  I  appeal  to 
Doctor  Evans,  who  had  helped  to  bring  her  into  the  world. 
"You  must  come,"  I  said  to  him.  "It  is  life  or  death." 

He  came,  swiftly,  but  in  a  few  moments  after  his  arrival 
he  gravely  announced  the  dreadful  truth.  "Your  child  is 
in  the  last  stages  of  diphtheria.  I  will  do  what  I  can  for 
her  but  she  should  have  had  the  antitoxin  five  days  ago.'7 

For  fort3^-eight  hours  our  baby's  life  was  despaired  of, 
yet  fought  for  by  a  heroic  nurse  who  refused  to  leave  her 
for  a  single  hour. 

Oh,  the  suspense,  the  agony  of  those  days  and  nights, 
when  her  mother  and  I,  helpless  to  serve,  were  shut  away 
from  her,  not  even  permitted  to  look  at  her.  We  could  do 
nothing — nothing  but  wait  through  the  interminable  hours, 
tortured  by  the  thought  that  she  might  be  calling  for  us. 
During  one  entire  dreadful  night  we  writhed  under  one  doc 
tor's  sentence,  "The  child  can  not  live,"  and  in  these  hours 
I  discovered  that  it  is  the  sweetest  love  that  casts  the  black 
est  shadow.  My  joy  in  my  daughter  was  an  agony  of  fear 
and  remorse — why  had  I  not  acted  sooner? 

As  I  imagined  my  world  without  that  radiant  face,  that 
bird-like  voice,  I  fell  into  black  despair.  My  only 
hope  was  in  the  nurse,  who  refused  to  give  her  up.  I  could 
not  talk  or  write  or  think  of  any  other  thing.  The  child's 
sufferings  filled  my  mind  with  an  intolerable  ache  of  appre 
hension.  I  had  possessed  her  only  a  few  years  and  yet 
she  was  already  woven  into  the  innermost  fibers  of  my  heart. 

323 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

That  night,  which  I  dare  not  dwell  upon,  put  my  youth 
definitely  behind  me.  When  the  blessed  word  came  that 
she  would  live,  and  I  was  permitted  to  look  upon  her  small 
wasted  face,  I  was  a  care-worn  middle-aged  man — willing 
to  give  up  any  part  of  my  life  to  win  that  tiny  sufferer 
back  to  health  and  happiness. 

Pitiful  little  Mary  Isabel,  pale  wraith  of  my  sturdy  com 
rade!  When  she  lifted  her  beseeching  eyes  to  me  and 
faintly,  fleetingly  smiled — unable  to  even  whisper  my  name, 
I,  forbidden  to  speak,  could  only  touch  her  cheek  with  my 
lips  and  leave  her  alone  with  her  devoted  nurse — for,  so 
weak  was  she  that  a  breath  might  have  blown  her  away, 
back  into  the  endless  shadow  and  silence  of  the  grave. 

At  that  moment  I  asked  myself,  "What  right  have  men 
and  women  to  bring  exquisite  souls  like  this  into  a  world 
of  disease  and  death?  Why  maintain  the  race?  What  pur 
pose  is  subserved  by  keeping  the  endless  chain  of  human 
misery  lengthening  on?" 

In  times  like  these  I  was  weaker  than  my  wife.  I  grant 
her  marvelous  fortitude,  sustained  by  something  which  I 
did  not  possess  and  could  not  acquire.  She  met  every 
crisis.  I  leaned  upon  her  serenity,  her  courage,  her  faith 
in  the  future  which  was  in  no  sense  a  religious  creed.  It 
was  only  a  womanly  inheritance,  something  which  came 
down  the  long  line  of  her  maternal  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors. 

At  last  the  day  came  when  the  nurse  permitted  me  to  take 
my  daughter  again  in  my  arms  and  carry  her  out  to  the 
easy  chair  before  the  fire.  The  moment  was  perfect.  The 
veil  of  snow  falling  without,  the  leaping  firelight  on  the 
hearth,  and  the  presence  of  my  wife  and  father,  united  to 
fill  me  with  happiness.  I  became  the  fond  optimist  again — 
the  world  was  not  so  black — our  year  was  worthy  of  Thanks 
giving  after  all. 

Nevertheless  I  was  aware  that  a  bitter  ineradicable  dusk 
had  gathered  in  the  corners  and  crannies  of  the  old  house. 

324 


The    Fairy    World    of     Childhood 

Something  depressing,  repellent,  was  in  the  air.  My  sense  of 
joy,  my  feeling  of  comfort  in  its  seclusion  were  gone. 

"Never  again  will  this  be  a  restful  home  for  you  or  for 
me,"  I  declared  to  my  daughter.  "Its  shadow  is  now  an 
enemy,  its  isolation  a  menace."  To  my  wife  I  said,  "Let  us 
go  back  to  the  city  where  the  highest  type  of  medical  sci 
ence  is  at  the  end  of  the  telephone  wire." 

She  consented,  and  taking  the  child  in  my  arms,  I  left 
the  village  with  no  intention  of  ever  returning  to  it.  The 
fire  on  my  family  altar  seemed  dead,  never  again  to  be 
rekindled. 


325 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-TWO 

The    Old    Soldier    Gains    a    New 
Granddaughter 

FOR  nearly  two  years  I  did  not  even  see  the  Homestead. 
My  aversion  to  it  remained  almost  a  hatred.  The 
memory  of  those  desolate  weeks  of  quarantine  when  my  lit 
tle  daughter  suffered  all  the  agonies  of  death,  still  lingered 
over  its  walls,  a  poisonous  shadow  which  time  alone  could 
remove.  "I  shall  never  live  in  it  again,"  I  repeated  to  my 
friends,  and  when  some  one  wanted  to  rent  it  for  the  sum 
mer  I  consented — with  a  twinge  of  pain  I  must  confess,  for 
to  open  it  to  strangers  even  for  a  few  weeks  seemed  an  act 
of  disloyalty  to  the  memory  of  my  mother. 

Meanwhile  I  remained  a  moderately  happy  and  very  busy 
citizen  of  Chicago.  Not  content  with  esthetic  conditions 
and  in  the  belief  that  my  home  for  years  to  come  must  be 
somewhere  in  the  city's  confines,  I  had  resolved  to  estab 
lish  a  Club  which  should  be  (like  the  Players  in  New  York) 
a  meeting  place  for  artists  and  writers,  a  rallying  point  for 
Midland  Arts.  Feeling  very  keenly  the  lack  of  such  a 
rendezvous  I  said  to  Lorado,  "I  believe  the  time  has  come 
when  a  successful  literary  and  artistic  club  can  be  estab 
lished  and  maintained." 

The  more  I  pondered  on  the  situation,  the  greater  the  dis 
crepancy  between  the  Chicago  of  my  day  and  the  Boston 
of  my  father's  day  became.  "Why  was  it  that  the  Boston 
of  1860,  a  city  of  three  hundred  thousand  people,  should 
have  been  so  productive  of  great  writers,  while  this  vast 

326 


Old    Soldier    Gains    a    Granddaughter 

inland  metropolis  of  over  two  million  of  people  remains 
almost  negligible  in  the  world  of  Art  and  Letters?" 

Fuller,  who  refused,  characteristically,  to  endorse  my 
plan,  was  openly  discouraging.  To  him  the  town  was  a  pes 
tilential  slough  in  which  he,  at  any  rate,  was  inextricably 
mired,  and  though  he  was  not  quite  so  definite  with  me,  he 
said  to  others,  "Garland's  idea  is  sure  to  fail." 

Clarkson,  Browne  and  Taft,  however,  heartily  joined  my 
committee,  and  the  "Cliff  Dwellers,"  a  union  of  workers 
in  the  fine  arts,  resulted.  As  president  of  the  organization, 
I  set  to  work  on  plans  for  housing  the  club,  and  for  months 
I  was  absorbed  in  this  work. 

On  the  eighteenth  of  June,  1908,  in  the  midst  of  my  work 
on  the  club  affairs,  another  daughter  was  born  to  us, 
a  vigorous  and  shapely  babe,  with  delicate  limbs,  gray 
eyes,  and  a  lively  disposition,  and  while  my  wife,  who  came 
through  this  ordeal  much  better  than  before,  was  debating 
a  choice  of  names  for  her,  Mary  Isabel  gravely  announced 
that  she  had  decided  to  call  her  sister  "Marjorie  Christmas," 
for  the  reason,  as  she  explained,  that  these  were  the  nicest 
names  she  knew.  Trusting  first  born! — she  did  not  realize 
the  difference  which  this  new-found  playmate  was  about  to 
make  in  her  life,  and  her  joy  in  being  permitted  to  hold  the 
tiny  stranger  in  her  arms  was  pathetic. 

My  own  attitude  toward  "Marjorie  Christmas"  was  not 
indifferent  but  I  did  not  receive  her  with  the  same  intensity 
of  interest  with  which  I  had  welcomed  my  first  child.  Her 
place  was  not  waiting  for  her  as  was  the  case  of  Mary  Isabel. 
She  was  a  lovely  infant  and  perhaps  I  would  have  taken 
her  to  my  arms  with  keen  paternal  pride  had  it  not  been 
for  the  realization  that  in  doing  so  I  was  neglecting  her 
sister  whose  comradeship  with  me  had  been  so  close  (so  full 
of  exquisite  moments)  that  it  could  not  be  transferred  to 
another  daughter,  no  matter  how  alluring.  A  second  child 
is — a  second  child. 

327 


A  Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

To  further  complicate  our  problem,  Constance  (as  we 
finally  called  her),  passed  under  the  care  of  a  nursemaid, 
and  for  two  years  I  had  very  little  to  do  with  her.  I  sel 
dom  sang  this  child  to  sleep  as  I  had  done  countless  times 
with  Mary  Isabel.  She  did  not  ride  on  the  crook  of  my 
elbow,  or  climb  on  my  back,  or  look  at  picture  books  with 
me,  until  she  was  nearly  three  years  old.  We  regained  her, 
but  we  could  not  regain  the  hours  of  companionship  we  had 
sacrificed.  This  experience  enables  me  to  understand  the 
unhappiness  which  comes  to  so  many  homes,  in  which  the 
children  are  only  boarders,  foundlings  in  the  care  of  nurses 
and  governesses.  My  poverty,  my  small  dwelling  have 
given  me  the  most  precious  memories  of  my  daughters  in 
their  childish  innocence. 

[Connie,  who  is  now  as  tall  as  her  mother  and  signs  her 
drawings  "Constance  Hamlin  Garland"  is  looking  over  my 
shoulder  at  this  moment  with  a  sly  smile.  It  has  long  been 
known  to  her  that  she  was,  for  several  years,  very  much 
"in  the  discard"  but  she  does  not  hold  it  against  me.  She 
knows  that  it  would  be  hard  for  me  to  make  a  choice  be- 
tween  my  two  jewels  to-day — I  allude  to  them  as  mine  be 
cause  I  am  writing  this  book.  My  wife  has  a  different 
angle  of  vision  concerning  them.] 

My  father  came  down  from  West  Salem  to  see  this  sec 
ond  granddaughter,  and  on  the  whole,  approved  of  her,  al 
though  his  tenderest  interest,  like  mine,  remained  with 
Mary  Isabel,  who  was  now  old  enough  to  walk  and  talk 
with  him.  To  watch  her  trotting  along  the  street  with  that 
white-haired  warrior,  her  small  hand  linked  with  his,  was 
to  gain  a  deeply  moving  sense  of  the  continuity  of  life. 
How  slender  the  link  between  the  generations  appears  in 
such  a  case! 

Nothing,  not  even  the  birth  of  a  new  grandchild,  could 
divert  my  father  from  his  accustomed  round  of  city  sight 
seeing.  As  in  other  times,  so  now  he  again  demanded  to  be 

328 


Old    Soldier    Gains    a    Granddaughter 

shown  the  Stockyards,  the  Wheat  Pit,  the  Masonic  Tem 
ple  and  Lincoln  Park.  I  groaned  but  I  consented. 

It  happened  that  Ira  Morris,  one  of  the  owners  of  the 
Stockyards,  was  an  acquaintance,  and  the  courtesy  and  at 
tentions  which  were  shown  us  gave  the  old  farmer  immense 
satisfaction — and  when  he  found  that  Frank  Logan,  of 
"Logan  &  Bryan,"  (a  Commission  firm  to  which  he  had 
been  wont  to  send  his  wheat)  was  also  my  friend,  he  began 
to  find  in  my  Chicago  life  certain  compensating  particulars, 
especially  as  in  his  presence  I  assumed  a  prosperity  I  did 
not  possess. 

On  paper  I  sounded  fairly  well.  I  was  one  of  the  vice- 
presidents  of  the  National  Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters.  I 
had  a  "Town  house"  as  well  as  a  "country  place,"  and 
under  cover  of  the  fact  that  very  few  of  my  friends  had 
ever  inspected  both  properties,  I  was  able  in  some  degree  to 
camouflage  my  situation.  In  the  city  I  alluded  casually  to 
"my  Wisconsin  Homestead,"  and  when  in  West  Salem  I 
referred  with  quiet  affluence  to  "my  residence  in  Woodlawn." 
Explaining  that  it  was  a  three  story  house  I  passed  lightly 
over  the  fact  that  it  was  only  eighteen  feet  wide!  Similarly, 
in  speaking  of  "our  country  home"  I  did  not  explain  to  all 
my  friends  that  it  was  merely  an  ugly  old  farmhouse  on 
the  edge  of  a  commonplace  village.  I  stated  the  truth  in 
each  case  but  not  the  whole  truth. 

If  my  city  friend,  Charles  Hutchinson,  imagined  me 
spending  my  summers  in  a  noble  mansion  on  the  bank  of  a 
shining  river  it  was  not  my  duty  to  shock  him  by  declaring 
that  there  was  no  water  in  sight  and  that  my  garden  was 
only  a  truck  patch.  On  the  other  hand,  if  my  neighbors  in 
West  Salem  thought  of  me  as  living  in  a  handsome  brick 
mansion  in  Chicago,  and  writing  my  stories  in  a  spacious 
study  walled  with  books,  I  was  not  obliged  to  undeceive 
them. 

Fuller,  alas!  knew  all  the  facts  in  both  cases,  and  so  did 

329 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

Ernest  Seton,  who  had  visited  us  in  the  country  as  well 
as  in  our  city  home.  Fuller  not  only  knew  the  ins  and 
outs  of  my  houses ;  he  was  also  aware  that  my  royalties  were 
dwindling  and  that  my  wife  was  forced  to  get  along  with 
one  servant  and  that  we  used  the  street  cars  habitually. 

Being  president  of  the  Cliff  Dwellers  was  an  honor,  but 
the  distinction  carried  with  it  something  of  the  responsi 
bility  of  a  hotel-keeper  as  well  as  the  duties  of  a  lecture 
agent,  for  one  of  our  methods  in  building  up  attendance  at 
the  Club,  was  to  announce  special  luncheons  in  honor  of 
distinguished  visitors  from  abroad,  and  the  task  of  arrang 
ing  these  meetings  fell  usually  to  me.  In  truth,  the  ac 
tivities  of  the  club  took  a  large  part  of  my  time  and  carried 
a  serious  distraction  from  my  work,  but  I  welcomed  the 
diversion,  and  was  more  content  in  my  Chicago  residence 
than  I  had  been  for  several  years. 

Whenever  I  spoke  to  Zulime  of  my  failure  as  a  money- 
getter  she  loyally  declared  herself  rich  in  what  I  had  given 
her,  although  she  still  rode  to  grand  dinners  in  the  elevated 
trains,  carrying  her  slippers  in  a  bag.  It  was  her  patient 
industry,  her  cheerful  acceptance  of  endless  household 
drudgery  which  kept  me  clear  of  self-conceit.  I  began  to 
suspect  that  I  would  never  be  able  to  furnish  her  with  a 
better  home  than  that  which  we  already  owned,  and  this 
suspicion  sometimes  robbed  me  of  rest. 

This  may  seem  to  some  of  my  readers  an  unworthy  ad 
mission  on  the  part  of  a  man  of  letters,  but  it  is  a  per 
fectly  natural  and  in  a  sense,  logical  result  of  my  close 
associations  with  several  of  the  most  successful  writers  and 
artists  of  my  day.  It  was  inevitable  that  while  contrast 
ing  my  home  with  theirs,  I  should  occasionally  fall  into 
moods  of  self-disparagement,  almost  of  despair. 

To  see  my  wife  (whom  everybody  admired)  wearing 
thread-bare  cloaks  and  home-made  gowns,  to  watch  her 
making  the  best  of  our  crowded  little  dining-room  with  its 

330 


Old    Soldier    Gains    a    Granddaughter 

pitiful  furniture  and  its  sparse  silver,  were  constant  humilia 
tions,  an  accusation  which  embittered  me  especially  as  I  saw 
no  prospect  of  ever  providing  anything  more  worthy  of  her 
care. 

For  a  woman  of  taste,  wearing  made-over  gowns  is  a 
very  real  hardship,  but  Zulime  bore  her  deprivations  with  - 
heroic  cheerfulness,  taking  a  never-failing  delight  in  our 
narrow  home.  She  made  our  table  a  notable  meeting  place, 
for,  if  we  had  few  dollars  we  owned  many  friends  who 
found  their  way  to  us,  and  often  from  our  commonplace 
little  portal  we  plodded  away  in  the  rain  or  snow  to  dine  in 
the  stately  palaces  of  the  rich, — kings  of  commerce  and 
finance. 

Apparently  we  were  everywhere  welcome,  and  that  this 
was  due  almost  entirely  to  the  winning  personality  of  my 
wife,  I  freely  acknowledge.  That  she  had  scores  of  de 
voted  admirers  was  only  too  evident,  for  the  telephone  bell 
rang  almost  continuously  of  a  morning.  Always  ready  to 
give  her  time,  her  skill  and  her  abounding  sympathy  to 
those  who  made  piteous  demands  upon  her,  she  permitted 
these  incessant  telephone  interruptions,  although  I  charged 
her  with  being  foolishly  prodigal  in  this  regard.  If  she 
felt  resentful  of  the  narrow  walls  in  which  I  had  confined 
her,  she  did  not  complain. 

Whatever  my  wife's  state  of  mind  may  have  been  these 
were  restless  years  for  me.  As  an  officer  of  several  organiza 
tions  and  as  lecturer,  I  was  traveling  much  of  the  time, 
mostly  on  the  trail  between  New  York  City  and  Chicago. 
Even  when  at  home  I  had  only  three  morning  hours  for 
writing — but  that  was  not  the  worst  of  it.  My  convictions  • 
concerning  my  literary  mission  were  in  process  of  disintegra 
tion. 

My  children,  my  manifold  duties  as  theatrical  up-lifter 
and  club  promoter,  together  with  a  swift  letting  down  of 
my  mental  and  physical  powers,  caused  me  to  question  the 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

value  of  all  my  writing.  I  went  so  far  as  to  say,  "As  a 
writer  I  have  failed.  Perhaps  I  can  be  of  service  as  a 
citizen,"  with  my  Oklahoma  farms  bringing  in  a  small 
annual  income,  the  scrape  of  my  pen  became  a  weariness. 

That  I  was  passing  from  robust  manhood  to  middle  age 
was  also  evident  to  me  and  I  didn't  like  that.  I  resented 
deepening  wrinkles,  whitening  hairs  and  the  sense  of  weari 
ness  which  came  over  me  at  the  end  of  my  morning's  work. 
My  power  of  concentration  was  lessening.  Noises  irritated 
me  and  little  things  distracted  me.  I  could  no  longer  bend 
to  my  desk  for  five  hours  in  complete  absorption.  How 
my  wife  endured  me  during  those  years  I  can  not  explain. 
The  chirp  of  my  babies'  voices,  the  ring  of  the  telephone, 
the  rattle  of  the  garbage  cart,  the  whistle  of  the  postman — • 
each  annoyance  chopped  into  my  composition,  and  as  my 
afternoons  and  evenings  had  no  value  in  a  literary  way,  I 
was  often  completely  defeated  for  the  day.  Altogether  and 
inevitably  my  work  as  a  fictionist  sank  into  an  unimpor 
tant  place.  I  was  on  the  down-grade,  that  was  evident. 
Writing  was  a  tiresome  habit.  I  was  in  a  rut  and  longing  to 
get  out — to  be  forced  out. 

The  annual  dinner  of  the  Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters 
that  year  was  not  cheering.  With  the  loss  of  four  mem 
bers,  Stedman,  Aldrich,  MacDowell  and  St.  Gaudens,  I  real 
ized  as  never  before  the  swift  changes  at  work  in  American 
letters.  It  was  my  duty  and  my  privilege  to  speak  that 
night  in  memory  of  MacDowell  who  had  so  often  been  my 
seat-mate,  and  as  I  looked  around  that  small  circle  of 
familiar  faces,  a  scene  of  loss,  a  perception  of  decay  came 
over  me  like  a  keen  wind  from  out  a  desolate  landscape. 
On  every  head  the  snows  had  thickened,  on  every  face  a 

shadow  rested.    All — all  were  hastening  to  be  history. 
*****        * 

From  that  circle  of  my  elders  in  the  East,  I  returned  to 
my  children  in  the  West  with  a  sense  of  returning  to  the 

332 


Old    Soldier    Gains    a    Granddaughter 

future.  The  radiant  joy  of  Mary  Isabel's  face  as  I  dis 
played  her  presents,  a  ring  and  a  story  book,  restored  me 
to  something  like  a  normal  faith  in  the  world.  "Wead 
to  me,  wead  to  me!"  was  now  her  insistent  plea,  and  put 
ting  aside  all  other  concerns  I  turned  the  pages  of  her  new 
book,  realizing  that  to  her  the  universe  was  still  a  great 
and  never-ending  fairy  tale,  and  her  Daddy  a  wonder 
working  magician,  an  amiable  ogre.  Her  eager  voice,  her 
raptured  attention  enabled  me  to  recover,  for  a  moment, 
a  wholesome  faith  and  joy  in  my  world — a  world  which  was 
growing  gray  and  wan  and  cold  with  terrifying  swiftness. 

"Your  childhood  shall  be  as  happy  as  my  powers  will 
permit,"  I  vowed  once  again  as  I  looked  into  her  uplifted 
face.  "You  shall  have  only  pleasant  memories  of  me," 
and  in  this  spirit  I  gave  her  the  best  of  myself.  I  taught 
her  to  read,  I  told  her  stories  which  linked  her  mind  with 
that  of  her  pioneer  grandmother,  filling  her  brain  with  tradi 
tions  of  the  middle  border.  Dear  little  daughter,  her  daddy 
was  veritably  a  nobleman,  her  mother  a  queen — in  those 
days! 

My  wife  says  that  for  ten  years  I  was  always  either  on 
the  point  of  going  somewhere,  or  just  returning,  and  as  1 
turn  the  pages  of  my  diaries,  I  find  this  to  be  true,  but  also 
I  find  frequent  mention  of  meetings  with  John  Burroughs, 
Bacheller,  Gilder,  Alexander,  Madame  Modjeska,  William 
Vaughn  Moody  and  many  others  of  my  friends  distinguished 
in  the  arts. 

All  my  publishing  interests  and  most  of  my  literary 
friends  were  in  New  York  (my  support  came  from  there), 
hence  my  frequent  coming  and  going.  Whether  this  con 
stant  change,  these  sudden  and  violent  contrasts  in  my  way 
of  life  strengthened  my  fictional  faculty  or  weakened  it,  I 
can  not  say,  but  I  do  know  that  as  the  head  of  a  family  I 
found  concentrated  effort  increasingly  difficult  and  at  times 
very  nearly  impossible.  Constance  was  ailing  for  a  year, 

333 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

and  was  a  source  of  care,  of  pain  to  me,  as  to  her  mother. 
At  times,  many  times,  her  sufferings  filled  me  with  a  pas 
sionate  pity,  a  sense  of  rage,  of  helplessness.  Indeed  both 
children  were  subject  to  throat  and  lung  disorders,  espe 
cially  when  in  the  city. 

Oh,  those  cruel  coughing  spells,  those  nights  of  burning 
fever,  those  alarming  hours  of  stupor  or  of  terrifying  de 
lirium!  "Can  science  find  no  check  upon  these  recurrent 
forms  of  disease?"  I  demanded  of  our  doctor.  "Must  hu 
manity  forever  suffer  the  agonies  of  diphtheria  and  pneu 
monia?  If  so  why  bring  children  into  the  world?" 

We  always  knew  when  these  disorders  had  set  in,  we 
knew  all  the  signs  but  no  medicine  availed  to  stop  their 
progress.  Each  attack  ran  its  course  in  spite  of  nurse  and 
drug  whilst  I  raged  helplessly  and  Zulime  grew  hollow-eyed 
with  anxious  midnight  vigil.  Death  was  a  never-absent 
hovering  shadow  when  those  bitter  winter  winds  were  blow 
ing,  and  realizing  this  I  came  to  hate  the  great  desolate  city 
in  which  we  lived,  and  to  long  with  the  most  passionate 
ardor  for  the  coming  of  April's  sun. 

One  of  the  first  signs  of  spring  (so  far  as  Mary  Isabel  was 
concerned)  was  the  opening  of  the  "White  City,"  a  pleas 
ure  park  near  us,  and  the  second  event  quite  as  conclusive 
and  much  more  exciting  was  the  coming  of  the  circus. 
These  were  the  red  letter  days  in  her  vernal  calendar,  and 
were  inescapable  outings,  for  her  memory  was  tenacious. 
Each  May  she  demanded  to  be  taken  to  the  "Fite  City" 
and  later  "the  Kings  and  Queens"  and  "the  fairies"  of  the 
circus  claimed  her  worship.  Together  we  saw  these  glorious 
sights,  which  filled  her  little  soul  with  rapture. 

For  two  years  my  estrangement  from  the  old  Homestead 
was  complete,  but  when  one  April  day  I  found  myself 
passing  it  on  my  way  to  St.  Paul,  I  was  constrained  to  stop 
off  just  to  see  how  my  father  and  the  garden  were  coming  on. 

This  was  late  April,  and  the  day  warm,  windless  and 

334 


Old    Soldier    Gains    a    Granddaughter 

musical  with  sounds  of  spring.  The  maples  and  the  elms 
had  adorned  themselves  with  most  bewitching  greens,  the 
dandelions  beckoned  from  sunny  banks,  and  through  the 
radiant  mist,  the  nesting  birds  were  calling.  In  a  flood,  all 
the  ancient  witchery  of  the  valley,  all  of  the  Homestead's 
loveliest  associations  came  back  to  soften  my  mood,  to  re 
gain  my  love.  Wrought  upon  by  the  ever-returning  youth 
of  the  world — a  world  to  which  my  daughters  were  akin,  I 
relented,  "We  will  come  back.  Cruel  as  some  of  its  memo 
ries  are,  this  is  home,  I  belong  here,  and  so  does  Mary 
Isabel." 

The  sunlight  streaming  into  my  mother's  chamber  lay 
like  a  fairy  carpet  on  the  floor,  waiting  for  the  dancing 
feet  of  her  grandchildren.  Her  spirit  filled  the  room,  calling 
to  me,  consoling  me,  convincing  me. 

All  day  I  worked  at  trimming  vines,  and  planting  flowers 
while  the  robins  chuckled  from  the  lawn,  and  the  maples 
expanded  overhead.  How  spacious  and  wide  and  safe  the 
yard  appeared,  a  natural  playground  for  the  use  of  children. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  on  June  seventeenth,  just  be 
fore  Constance's  second  birthday,  Mary  Isabel  and  I  took 
the  night  trairi  for  West  Salem,  leaving  Zulime  and  the 
nurse  to  follow  next  morning.  Greatly  excited  at  the  pros 
pect  of  going  to  sleep  on  the  cars  my  daughter  went  to  her 
bed.  "I  kick  for  joy,"  she  said,  her  eyes  shining  with  elfin 
delight. 

She  loved  the  "little  house"  as  she  called  her  berth,  and 
for  an  hour  she  lay  peering  out  at  the  moon.  "It  follows 
us!"  she  cried  out  in  pleased  surprise. 

"Yes,  it  is  a  kindly  moon.  It  will  keep  right  along  over 
head  all  the  way  to  West  Salem.  But  you  must  go  to 
sleep  now.  I  shall  call  you  early  in  the  morning  to  meet 
Grandfather." 

She  was  a  reasonable  soul,  entirely  confident  of  my  care, 
and  so,  putting  her  head  on  my  arm,  she  went  away  to 

335 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

dreamland.  At  such  times  my  literary  ambitions  and  fail 
ures  were  of  no  account.  [To  wish  myself  back  there  with 
that  tiny  form  beside  me  is  folly — but  I  do — I  do!] 

In  the  cool  lusciousness  of  the  June  morning  we  met 
Grandpa,  and  as  we  entered  the  gate  of  the  Homestead 
(which  Mary  Isabel  only  dimly  remembered),  I  said,  "This 
is  your  home,  daughter,  you  belong  here." 

"Can  I  pick  the  flowers?  Can  I  walk  on  the  grass?"  she 
asked  quickly. 

"Yes,  pick  all  you  want.  You  can  roll  on  the  grass  if 
you  wish." 

Too  excited  to  eat  any  breakfast,  she  ran  from  posy 
bed  to  posy  bed,  and  from  tree  to  tree,  indefatigable  as  a 
bee  or  humming-bird.  At  five  in  the  afternoon  Zulime  and 
Constance  came. 

In  the  weeks  which  followed  I  renewed  my  childhood. 
To  Mary  Isabel  as  to  me  at  her  age,  the  cornfield  was  a 
vast  mysterious  forest,  and  the  rainbow  an  overpowering 
miracle. 

"Don't  they  have  rainbows  in  the  city?"  she  asked  one 
evening  as  we  were  watching  a  glorious  arch  fade  out  of 
the  sky  above  the  hills. 

"Not  such  big  beautiful  double  ones,"  I  replied.  "They 
haven't  room  for  them  in  the  city." 

She  took  the  same  delight  in  the  flame  and  flare  of  the 
Fourth  of  July  which  I  once  owned.  She  loved  to  walk  in 
the  fields.  Snakes,  bugs,  worms  and  spiders  enthralled 
her.  Each  hour  brought  its  vivid  message,  its  wonder  and 
its  delight,  and  when  now  and  again  she  was  allowed  to 
explore  the  garden  with  me  at  night,  the  murk  and  the 
stars,  and  the  stealthily  moving  winds  in  the  corn,  scared, 
awed  her.  At  such  moments  the  universe  was  a  delicious 
mystery.  Keeping  close  hold  upon  my  hand  she  whispered 
with  excitement,  "What  was  that,  Poppie?  What  was  that 
noise?  Was  it  a  gnome?" 

336 


Old   Soldier    Gains   a    Granddaughter 

For  her  I  built  a  "House"  high  in  the  big  maple,  and 
there  she  often  climbed,  spending  many  happy  hours  singing 
to  her  dollies  or  conning  over  her  picture  books.  Her  face 
shone  down  upon  me  radiant  with  life's  ecstasy.  Baby 
Constance  was  to  her  a  toy,  a  doll,  I  was  her  companion,  her 
playmate.  The  garden  seemed  fashioned  for  her  uses,  and 
whenever  I  saw  her  among  the  flowers  or  sitting  on  the  lawn, 
I  forgot  my  writing,  realizing  that  these  were  golden  days 
for  me  as  well  as  for  her, — days  that  would  pass  like  waves 
of  light  across  the  wheat. 

Together  with  Zulime  I  received  the  house  back  into  my 
affection.  Once  more  I  thought  of  it  as  something  perma 
nent,  a  sure  refuge  in  time  of  trouble.  It  gave  us  both  a 
comforting  sense  of  security  to  know  that  we  could,  at  need, 
come  back  to  it  and  live  in  comfort.  With  no  hope  of 
attaining  a  larger  income,  saving  money  was  earning  money 
for  us  both.  In  this  spirit  I  put  in  another  bathroom,  and 
enlarged  the  dining-room — doing  much  of  the  work  with  my 
own  hands. 

Nothing  could  be  more  idyllic  than  our  daily  routine  that 
summer.  Our  diversions,  dependent  on  a  love  of  odorous 
fields,  colorful  hills  and  fruitful  vines,  were  of  arcadian  con 
tent.  Our  wealth  expressed  in  nuts  and  apples  and  berries 
was  ample.  With  Mary  Isabel  I  assumed  that  wild  grapes 
were  enormously  important  articles  of  food.  "Without 
them  we  might  grow  hungry  this  winter,"  I  warned  her. 
In  this  spirit  we  harvested,  intent  as  chipmunks. 

After  the  nurse  left  us  the  two  children  slept  together 
on  an  upstairs  screened-in  porch,  and  every  night,  just  be 
fore  they  went  to  sleep,  it  was  my  habit  to  visit  them. 
Lying  down  between  them  with  a  small  head  on  each  arm, 
I  told  them  stories  or  answered  the  questions  which  were 
suggested  by  the  trees  and  the  sky.  "What  are  stars? 
What  makes  the  moon  spotted?  WThat  does  iron  come  from? 
How  do  people  make  wall  paper?"  and  many  others  equally 

337 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

elemental.    It  was  a  tender  hour  for  me  and  a  delicious  one 
for  them. 

Gradually  as  they  grew  older,  they  fell  into  the  habit  of 
saying,  "Now  tell  us  about  when  you  were  a  little  boy,"  and 
so  I  was  led  to  freshen  up  on  A  Son  of  the  Middle  Border, 
which  I  had  begun  to  rewrite.  They  could  never  get  enough 
of  these  reminiscences  and  when,  at  nine  o'clock,  I  said, 
"Daughties,  you  must  go  to  sleep,"  they  pleaded  for  "Just 
one  more,"  and  from  this  interest  I  derived  a  foolish  hope 
that  the  book,  if  it  should  ever  get  published,  would  be 
successful. 

It  was  sweet  to  hear  those  soft  voices  demanding  an 
explanation  of  the  universe  whose  wonders  they  were  re 
discovering  in  their  turn.  Every  changing  season,  every 
expanding  leaf  was  magical  to  them.  A  bat  skittering 
about  the  chimney,  the  rustle  of  a  breeze  in  the  maples, 
were  of  sinister  significance  requiring  explanation,  and  when 
at  last  I  went  away  and  they  began  to  softly  sing  their 
wistful  little  evening  prayer,  one  which  Mary  Isabel  had 
composed,  life  seemed  worthwhile  even  to  me.  I  forgot 
the  irrevocable  past  and  confronted  old  age  with  compo 
sure. 

Meanwhile  my  father's  mind  was  becoming  more  and 
more  reminiscent.  His  stories  once  so  vivid  and  so  full 
of  detail  had  narrowed  down  to  a  few  familiar  phrases. 
"Just  then  Sherman  and  his  staff  came  riding  along,"  or 
"When  I  was  camped  on  the  upper  waters  of  the  Wis 
consin."  His  memory  was  failing  and  so  was  his  sense  of 
hearing.  He  seldom  quoted  from  a  book,  but  he  still  cited 
Elaine's  speeches  or  referred  to  Lincoln's  anecdotes,  and 
certain  of  Grant's  phrases  were  often  on  his  lips.  In  all 
his  interests  he  remained  objective,  concerned  with  the 
world  of  action  not  with  the  library,  and  while  he  made 
no  effort  to  talk  down  to  Mary  Isabel,  he  contrived  to  win 
her  adoration,  perhaps  because  she  detected  in  his  voice  his 

338 


Old    Soldier    Gains    a    Granddaughter 

adoring  love  for  her.     In  the  mist  of  his  glance  was  the 
tender  worship  of  youth  on  the  part  of  age. 

Always  of  a  Sunday  we  sang  for  him  and  sometimes 
Uncle  Frank,  the  last  of  the  McClintocks,  gray  haired  and 
lean  and  bent,  came  in  with  his  fiddle  and  played  while  the 
children  danced  in  the  light  of  our  fire,  so  lithe,  so 
happy,  so  fairy-like  in  their  loveliness  that  he  and  Lorette 
sat  in  silence,  a  silence  which  was  at  once  tender  and  tragic. 
There  was  something  alien  as  well  as  marvelous  in  the 
dramatic  movements  of  those  small  forms. 

Witnessing  such  scenes,  moved  by  something  elemental 
in  their  decay,  I  continued  to  brood  over  the  manuscript 
which  was  to  be  a  kind  of  autobiography,  the  blended  story 
of  the  vicissitudes  of  the  Garlands  and  the  McClintocks. 
At  times  I  worked  upon  it  to  the  exclusion  of  all  else,  and 
when  I  read  a  part  of  the  tale  to  Mary  Isabel  and  found 
that  she  understood  it  and  liked  it,  I  was  heartened. 

Consider  this!  I  now  had  a  daughter  to  whom  I  could 
read  my  manuscript!  Where  did  that  personality  come 
from?  Was  her  soul  merely  the  automatic  reaction  of  a 
material  organism  against  a  material  environment?  Was 
her  spirit  dependent  on  the  life  of  its  little  body  or  could 
it  live  on  independent  of  the  flesh?  Acknowledging  the 
benumbing,  hopeless  mystery  of  it  all,  I  continued  to  live 
for  my  children,  finding  in  them  my  comfort  and  my  justi 
fication. 

I  have  never  known  anything  more  perfect  than  some  of 
those  mid-August  days  when  on  some  woodland  slope,  we 
gathered  the  luscious  musky  fruit  of  wild  blackberry  vines 
and  at  our  camp  fire  broiled  our  steak  and  made  our  coffee 
for  our  evening,  open-air  meal. 

There  were  no  flies,  no  mosquitoes,  no  snakes,  and  the 
hillsides  were  abloom  with  luscious  shining  berries,  berries 
so  ripe  they  fell  into  our  hands  with  the  slightest  touch,  and 
so  tender  that  they  melted  in  our  mouths.  The  wind  filled 

339 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

with  the  odor  of  yellowing  corn,  and  the  smell  of  nuts  and 
leaves,  carried  our  songs  to  the  mist-filled  valley  below  us, 
and  the  children  playing  on  the  smooth  sward  found  our 
world  a  paradise. 

As  the  cool  dusk  began  to  cover  the  farms  below  us,  we 
sang  "Juanita"  and  "Kentucky  Home"  and  told  our  last 
stories  while  the  children  lay  at  our  feet,  silent  with  rapture 
as  I  used  to  be,  in  similar  circumstances,  forty  years  before. 

And  then  when  the  fire  had  died  down  and  sleepy  babies 
were  ready  to  turn  their  faces  bedward,  we  drove  slowly 
down  the  winding  lane  to  the  dust-covered  bridge,  past  the 
small  cemetery  where  mother  was  sleeping,  back  to  where 
the  broad-roofed  old  house  was  waiting  for  us  like  some 
huge,  faithful  creature  yearning  to  receive  us  once  again 
beneath  its  wings.  It  was  commonplace  to  our  neighbors 
and  without  special  significance  to  the  world,  but  to  my 
children  it  was  noble  and  beautiful  and  poetic — it  was 
home. 


440 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-THREE 

"Cavanagh"     and     the     "Winds     of 
Destiny" 

NO  doubt  the  reader  has  come  to  the  conclusion,  at  this 
point,  that  my  habits  as  an  author  were  not  in  the 
least  like  those  of  Burroughs  or  Howells.  There  has  never 
been  anything  cloistered  about  my  life,  on  the  contrary  my 
study  has  always  been  a  point  of  departure  rather  than  a 
cell  of  meditation.  From  Elm  Street,  from  the  Homestead, 
I  frequently  darted  away  to  the  plains  or  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  keenly  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  miner  and  cattle 
man,  the  trapper  and  the  trailer  were  being  pushed  into 
ever  remoter  valleys  by  the  men  of  the  hoe  and  the  spade, 
and  that  the  customs  and  habits  which  the  mountaineer 
had  established  were  about  to  pass,  precisely  as  the  blossom 
ing  prairies  had  long  since  been  broken  and  fenced  and 
made  commonplace  by  the  plow. 

That  the  destruction  of  the  eagle  and  the  mountain  lion 
marked  another  stage  of  that  remorseless  march  which  is 
called  civilization  I  fully  recognized  and — in  a  certain  sense 
— approved,  although  the  raising  of  billions  of  hens  and 
pigs  admittedly  useful,  was  not  to  me  an  inspiring  employ 
ment  of  human  energy.  The  long-horn  white-faced  steer 
was  more  picturesque  than  a  "Mooly"  cow. 

Doubtless  a  dairyman  is  a  more  valuable  citizen  in  the 
long  run  than  a  prospector  or  miner,  but  he  does  not  so 
easily  appeal  to  the  imagination.  To  wade  irrigating 
ditches,  hoe  in  hand,  is  not  incompatible  with  the  noblest 
manhood,  but  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  men  riding  the 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

trail  or  exploring  ledges  of  quartz  are  more  alluring  charac 
ters  to  the  novelist — at  least  that  was  the  way  I  felt  in 
1909  when  I  began  to  shape  another  book  concerning  the 
great  drama  which  was  going  on  in  the  forests  of  the  High 
Country. 

For  more  than  fifteen  years,  while  trailing  among  the 
mountains  of  Colorado,  Montana  and  Wyoming,  I  had  seen 
the  Forest  Service,  under  Gifford  Pinchot's  leadership,  grad 
ually  getting  into  effect.  I  had  seen  the  silver  miner  dis 
appear  and  the  army  of  forest  rangers  grow  from  a  hand 
ful  of  hardy  cowboys  and  "lonesome  men"  into  a  disciplined 
force  of  over  two  thousand  young  foresters  who  represented 
in  some  degree  the  science  and  the  patriotism  of  their  chief. 

As  in  Hesper  and  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop 
I  had  attempted  to  depict  certain  types  of  the  red  men, 
miners  and  ranchers.  I  now  began  to  study  the  mountain 
vedettes  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Forest  Ranger,  a 
federal  officer  who  represented  our  newly  acquired  ideals  of 
Conservation,  and  whose  duty  it  was  to  act  as  custodian  of 
the  National  Forests.  I  decided  to  write  a  novel  which 
should,  in  some  degree,  delineate  the  heroic  side  of  this 
warden's  solitary  life  as  I  had  seen  it  and  shared  it  in  a 
half-dozen  forests  in  Colorado,  Wyoming  and  Montana. 

In  this  writing  I  put  myself  at  the  opposite  pole  from  the 
scenes  of  The  Shadow  World,  a  study  of  psychic  phenomena 
with  which  I  had  been  deeply  involved  for  a  year  or  more. 
From  dark  cabinets  in  murky  seance  chambers,  from  con 
tact  with  morbid,  death-fearing,  light-avoiding  residents  of 
crowded  apartments,  I  now  found  myself  riding  once  again 
ten  thousand  feet  above  sea  level  with  men  who  "took 
chances"  almost  every  hour  of  their  lives — not  from  any 
reckless  defiance  of  death  but  merely  by  way  of  duty,  men 
who  lived  alone  and  rode  alone,  men  in  whose  ears  the 
mountain  streams  as  they  fell  from  the  white  silences  of 
the  snows,  uttered  songs  of  exultation.  In  the  presence 

342 


"Cavanagh"  and  "Winds  of  Destiny" 

of  these  hardy  trailers  the  doings  of  darkened  seance  rooms 
seemed  morbid,  if  not  actually  insane. 

The  stark  heroism  of  these  forest  guards,  their  loyalty 
to  a  far-off  chieftain  (whom  they  knew  only  by  name)  ap 
pealed  to  me  with  increasing  power.  Their  problem  became 
my  problem.  More  than  this  they  kindled  my  admiration, 
for  many  of  them  possessed  the  cowboy's  masterful  skill 
with  bronchoes,  his  deft  handling  of  rope  and  gun  and  the 
grace  which  had  made  him  the  most  admired  figure  in  our 
literature, — but  in  addition  to  all  this,  they  had  something 
finer,  something  which  the  cowboy  often  lacked.  At  their 
best  they  manifested  the  loyalty  of  soldiers.  Heedful  of  the 
Federal  Government,  they  strove  to  dispense  justice  over 
the  lands  which  had  been  allotted  to  their  care,  and  their 
flags — the  Stars  and  Stripes — as  I  came  upon  them  flutter 
ing  from  the  peaks  of  their  cabins  were  to  me  the  guidons  of 
a  new  and  valiant  skirmish  line.  They  were  of  the  Border 
in  a  new  and  noble  sense.  In  short  the  Federal  Ranger 
was  a  hero  made  to  my  hand. 

Not  all  the  soldiers  in  the  service  were  of  this  large  mold, 
I  admit,  but  many  of  those  I  had  met  did  possess  precisely 
the  qualities  I  have  outlined.  Ready,  cheerful,  undaunted 
in  the  face  of  danger,  some  of  them  had  the  capacity  for 
lonely  action  which  rendered  them  as  admirable  in  their 
way  as  any  of  the  long  line  of  frontiersmen  who  had  made 
the  winning  of  the  West  an  epic  of  singular  hardihood.  To 
fight  cold  and  snow  and  loneliness  during  long  months,  with 
no  one  looking  on,  calls  for  stern  resolution.  Such  work 
is  directly  antithetic  to  that  of  the  city  fireman  who  goes 
to  his  duties  with  a  crowd  looking  on.  The  ranger  has 
only  his  own  conscience  as  spectator.  For  many  weeks  he 
does  not  even  see  his  supervisor. 

To  the  writing  of  Cavanagh  I  came,  therefore,  in  the 
spirit  of  one  who  had  discovered  not  only  a  new  hero  but  the 
reverse  side  of  the  squatter's  shield.  Just  as  in  my  studies 

343 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

for  The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  I  had  come  upon 
the  seamy  side  of  the  cattleman's  activity,  so  now  I  per 
ceived  that  many  of  the  men  who  had  settled  on  the  na 
tional  forests  were  merely  adventurers  trying  to  get  some 
thing  for  nothing.  To  filch  Uncle  Sam's  gold,  to  pasture  on 
his  grass,  to  dig  his  coal  and  seize  his  water-power — these 
were  the  real  designs  of  the  claim-holders,  while  the  ranger 
was  in  effect  a  federal  policeman,  the  guardian  of  a  domain 
whose  wealth  was  the  heritage  of  us  all.  He  was  the 
prophet  of  a  new  order,  the  evangel  of  a  new  faith. 

The  actual  composition  of  Cavanagh  began  as  I  was 
riding  the  glorious  trails  around  Cloud  Peak  in  the  Big 
Horn  Mountains  of  northern  Wyoming  in  the  summer  of 
1908,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  all  my  outings,  for  while 
the  Big  Horns  are  low  and  tame  compared  to  the  Wind 
River  Range,  yet  the  play  of  their  lights  and  shadows,  their 
clouds,  and  their  mist  was  as  romantic  as  anything  I  had 
ever  encountered. 

I  recall  riding  alone  down  the  eastern  slope  one  after 
noon,  while  prodigious  rivers  of  cloud — white  as  wool  and 
soundless  as  light — descended  the  canon  on  my  right  and 
spread  above  the  foothills,  forming  a  level  sea  out  of  which 
the  high  dark  peaks  rose  like  rocky  islands.  This  flood 
came  so  swiftly,  flowed  so  marvelously  and  enveloped  my 
world  so  silently  that  the  granite  ledges  appeared  to  melt 
beneath  my  horse's  feet. 

At  times  the  vapor  closed  densely  round  me,  shutting  out 
even  the  rocks  of  the  trail  and  as  I  cautiously  descended, 
I  almost  bumped  astonished  steers  whose  heads  burst  from 
the  mist  as  if  through  a  covered  hoop.  The  high  granite 
crags  on  the  opposite  s$e  of  the  ravine  took  on  the  shapes 
of  ruined  castles  seated  on  sloping  shores  by  foaming  seas, 
their  smooth  lawns  reaching  to  the  foam. 

At  one  point,  as  I  came  out  upon  a  ledge  which  over- 

344 


"Cavanagh"  and  "Winds  of  Destiny" 

looked  the  valley,  I  perceived  my  horse's  shadow  floating 
on  the  phantom  ocean  far  below  me,  a  dark  equestrian 
statue  encircled  with  a  triple-ringed  halo  of  fire.  In  all  my 
mountain  experiences  I  had  never  seen  anything  so  mar 
velous. 

At  another  time  while  riding  up  the  trail,  I  perceived 
above  my  head  a  far-stretching  roof  of  seamless  cloud.  As 
I  rose,  coming  closer  and  closer  to  it,  it  seemed  a  ceiling 
just  above  my  reach,  then  my  head  merged  in  it.  A  kind 
of  dry  mist  surrounded  me — and  for  ten  or  fifteen  minutes 
I  mounted  through  this  luminous,  strangely  shrouding,  all 
pervasive,  mountain  cloud.  My  horse,  feeling  his  way  with 
cautious  care,  steadily  mounted  and  soon  we  burst  out  into 
the  clear  sunlight  above.  While  still  the  mist  curled  about 
my  horse's  hoofs,  I  looked  across  a  shoreless  ocean  with 
only  Cloud  Peak  and  its  granite  crags  looming  above  its 
surface. 

I  describe  these  two  spectacular  effects  out  of  many  others 
merely  to  suggest  the  splendors  which  inspired  me,  and 
which,  as  I  imagined,  enriched  the  daily  walk  of  the  forest 
guard.  "To  get  into  my  story  some  part  of  this  glory,  my 
hero  must  be  something  of  a  nature  lover — as  many  rangers 
are,"  I  argued,  and  this  was  true.  Before  a  man  will  con 
sent  to  ride  the  lonely  road  which  leads  to  his  cabin  high 
in  the  forest,  he  must  not  only  have  a  heart  which  thrills 
to  the  wonder  of  the  lonely  places,  he  must  be  self-sufficing 
and  fearless.  I  rode  with  several  such  men  and  out  of  my 
experiences  with  them  I  composed  the  character  of  Ross 
Cavanagh. 

The  actual  writing  of  this  novel  was  begun  on  my  forty- 
ninth  birthday  at  my  desk  in  the  old  Homestead,  and  I 
started  off  with  enthusiasm  notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
Fuller,  who  was  visiting  me  at  the  time,  expressed  only  a 
tepid  interest  in  my  "theme."  "Why  concern  yourself  with 

345 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

forestry?"  he  asked.  "No  one  wants  to  read  about  the 
ranger  and  his  problems.  Grapple  with  Chicago — or  New 
York.  That's  the  only  way  to  do  a  'best  seller.'  " 

Henry  always  amused  me  but  never  so  much  as  when 
tolerating  rural  joys.  He  was  the  exact  opposite  of  my 
Cavanagh.  Everything  pastoral  wearied  him  or  irritated 
him.  The  "yelping"  of  the  robins,  the  "drone"  of  the  katy 
dids,  the  "eternal  twitter"  of  the  sparrows  infuriated  him. 
The  "accursed  roosters"  unseasonably  wakened  him  in  the 
morning,  the  "silly  cackle"  of  the  chickens  prevented  him 
from  writing.  Flowers  bored  him  and  the  weather  was 
always  too  cold  or  too  hot,  too  damp  or  too  dusty.  Butter 
flies  filled  him  with  pessimistic  forebodings  of  generations 
of  cabbage  worms.  Moths  suggested  ruined  coat  collars — • 
only  at  night,  before  our  fire,  with  nature  safely  and  firmly 
shut  out,  did  he  regain  his  customary  and  charming  humor. 

He  belonged  to  the  brick  pavement,  the  electric-car  line. 
He  did  not  mind  being  awakened  by  the  "twitter"  of  a  milk 
cart.  The  "yelp"  of  the  ice  man,  the  snort  of  a  six  o'clock 
switch  engine  and  the  "cackle"  of  a  laundry  wagon  formed 
for  him  a  pleasant  morning  symphony.  The  clatter  of  an 
elevated  train  was  with  him  the  normal  accompaniment  of 
dawn,  but  the  poetry  of  the  pastoral — well,  it  didn't  exist, 
that's  all — except  in  "maudlin  verses  of  lying  sentimental 
ists."  "I'm  like  George  Ade's  clerk:  I  never  enjoy  my  vaca 
tion  till  I  get  back  to  the  city." 

To  all  such  diatribes  Zulime  and  I  gave  delighted  ear. 
We  rejoiced  in  his  comment,  for  we  did  not  believe  a  word 
of  it,  it  was  all  a  part  of  Henry's  delightful  perversity. 

For  six  consecutive  weeks  I  bent  to  the  work  of  writing 
my  novel  undisturbed.  A  peaceful  season  which  I  shall 
long  remember,  for  almost  every  afternoon,  when  the  wea 
ther  permitted,  we  joined  the  Dudleys  and  McKees  and 
drove  to  some  lovely  spot  on  the  river  bank  or  sought  out 
some  half-hidden  spring  at  the  far  end  of  a  coulee  and 

346 


"Cavanagh"  and  "Winds  of  Destiny" 

there,  while  the  children  picked  nuts  or  apples  and  the 
women  read  magazines  or  stitched,  George  Dudley  and  I 
lighted  our  fire  and  broiled  our  steak.  Nothing  could  be 
simpler,  homelier,  more  wholesome,  than  this  life,  and  I  was 
able  to  do  nearly  half  my  story  before  a  return  to  Chicago 
became  necessary. 

Practically  all  of  the  spring  months  of  1910  were  given 
to  revising  and  proof-reading  Cavanagh,  Forest  Ranger, 
which  had  genuinely  interested  me  and  which  should,  have 
been  as  important  in  my  scheme  of  delineating  the  West  as 
The  Captain  of  the  Gray  Horse  Troop,  but  it  wasn't.  It 
was  too  controversial,  and  besides  I  did  not  give  it  time 
enough.  I  should  have  taken  another  year  to  it — but  I 
didn't.  I  permitted  myself  to  be  hurried  by  Duneka,  who 
was  (like  most  publishers)  enslaved  to  a  program.  By 
April  it  was  off  my  hands. 

After  the  last  page  of  this  proof  was  returned  to  the 
printer  a  sense  of  weakness,  of  age,  a  feeling  altogether  new 
to  me,  led  me  to  say  to  Fuller,  "I  shall  never  do  another 
book.  I  have  finished  what  I  started  out  to  do,  I  have 
pictured  certain  broad  phases  of  the  West  as  I  know  it,  and 
I'm  done.  I  am  out  of  commission." 

Fuller,  who  had  been  of  this  mood  for  several  years,  was 
not  content  to  have  me  assume  a  despairing  attitude. 
"You're  just  tired,  that's  all,"  he  insisted.  "You'll  come  to 
a  new  theme  soon." 

Movement  is  swift  on  the  Border.  Nothing  endures  for 
more  than  a  generation.  No  family  really  takes  root. 
Every  man  is  on  his  way.  Cities  come  and  builders  go. 
Unfinished  edifices  are  left  behind  in  order  that  something 
new  and  grander  may  be  started.  Some  other  field  is  better 
than  the  one  we  are  reaping.  I  do  not  condemn  this,  I  be 
lieve  in  it.  It  is  America's  genius.  We  are  all  experi 
menters,  pioneers,  progressives. 

347 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

For  years  I  had  in  mind  to  write  a  book  to  be  called 
The  Winds  of  Destiny,  in  which  I  should  take  up  one  by 
one  the  differing  careers  of  my  classmates  and  friends  who 
had  found  our  little  prairie  town  too  narrow  and  too  poor 
to  afford  them  fullest  action.  I  never  got  to  it,  but  from 
time  to  time  I  found  some  new  material  for  it — material 
which,  alas!  I  can  not  now  find  imagination  enough  to 
vitalize. 

For  example:  One  morning  during  a  stay  in  New  York,  I 
found  among  my  letters  a  note  from  an  almost  forgotten 
school-fellow,  inviting  me  to  dine  with  himself  and  wife 
at  the  Ritzdorf.  The  name  on  this  note-head  developed  on 
the  negative  plate  of  my  memory,  the  picture  of  two  shock- 
headed,  slender-legged  schoolboys  pacing  solemnly,  regu 
larly,  morning  after  morning,  into  the  campus  of  the  Semi 
nary  in  Osage,  Iowa.  Their  arms  were  always  laden  with 
books,  their  big  brows  bulging  with  thought.  Invariably 
marching  side  by  side  like  a  faithful  team  of  horses,  turning 
aside  neither  to  fight  nor  to  play,  they  provoked  laughter. 

They  were  the  sons  of  a  farmer  (a  man  of  small  means, 
who  lived  a  mile  or  two  from  the  village),  and  although  they 
were  familiar  figures  in  the  school  they  could  hardly  be  said 
to  be  a  part  of  it.  Their  poverty,  their  homespun  trousers 
which  were  usually  too  short  and  too  tight,  and  their  pov 
erty  together  with  a  natural  shyness,  kept  them  out  of 
school  affairs,  although  they  were  always  at  the  top  of  their 
classes.  To  me  they  were  worthy — though  a  bit  grotesque. 

My  letter  of  invitation  was  from  the  younger  of  these 
boys,  and  having  accepted  his  invitation,  I  was  a  bit  in 
doubt  as  to  what  I  should  wear,  for  he  had  written,  "with 
Mrs.  Roberts  and  myself,"  and  something  in  the  tone  of  the 
letter  had  decided  me  to  play  safe.  I  put  on  evening  dress, 
and  it  was  well  I  did,  for  Ben  met  me  in  irreproachable 
dinner  coat  and  presented  his  wife,  a  handsome  and  beauti 
fully  gowned  woman,  quite  in  the  manner  of  a  city-bred 

348 


"Cavanagh"  and  "Winds  of  Destiny" 

host.  No  one  looking  at  us  as  we  sat  at  our  flower-decked 
table  would  have  imagined  that  he  or  I  had  ever  been  plow- 
boys  of  the  Middle  Border. 

As  the  dinner  went  on  I  lost  all  my  conviction  that  the 
preternaturally  solemn,  heavy-footed  lad  of  1880  was  in 
any  way  connected  with  this  rich  middle-aged  inventor,  but 
then  he  was  probably  having  the  same  difficulty  relating 
me  with  the  beardless  senior  of  1881. 

On  the  surface  our  dinner  was  a  pleasant  and  rather 
conventional  meeting,  and  yet  the  more  it  is  dwelt  upon  the 
more  significant  it  becomes.  Starting  from  almost  the  same 
point,  with  somewhat  similar  handicaps,  we  two  had  "ar 
rived,"  though  at  widely  separated  goals.  Each  of  our 
courses  was  characteristically  American,  and  each  was  in 
demonstration — for  the  millionth  time — of  the  magic  power 
of  the  open  lands. 

In  the  free  air  of  the  Middle  Border,  this  man's  genius 
for  inventing  had  full  power  of  expansion,  and  in  result  he 
was  in  possession  of  a  fortune,  whilst  I,  in  my  literary  way, 
had  won  what  my  kindest  critics  called  success — by  an 
other  kind  of  service.  My  position  though  less  secure  and 
far  less  remunerative,  was  none  the  less  honorable — that 
I  shall  insist  on  saying  even  though  I  must  admit  that  in 
the  eyes  of  my  Seminary  classmates  the  inventor  made  the 
handsomer  showing.  As  the  owner  of  a  patent  bringing 
in  many  thousands  of  dollars  per  year  in  royalty  he  had 
certain  very  definite  claims  to  respect  which  I  lacked.  My 
home  in  contrast  with  his  would  have  seemed  very  humble. 
Measured  by  material  things,  his  imagination  had  proved 
enormously  more  potent  than  mine. 

This  meeting  not  only  led  me  to  re-value  my  own  achieve 
ment,  it  brought  up  to  me  with  peculiar  pathos  the  career 
of  another  classmate,  my  comrade  Burton  Babcock,  whom 
I  (in  1898)  had  left  standing  on  the  bank  of  the  Stickeen 
River  in  Alaska.  He,  too,  was  characteristically  American. 

349 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

He  had  carried  out  his  plan.  After  leading  his  pack  train 
across  the  divide  to  the  upper  waters  of  the  Yukon,  he  had 
built  a  raft  and  floated  down  the  Hotalinqua.  He  had  been 
frozen  in,  and  had  spent  the  winter  in  a  windowless  hut  in 
the  deep  snow  of  an  arctic  landscape — and  when,  after 
incredible  hardships,  he  had  'reached  the  Klondike,  he  had 
found  himself  almost  as  far  from  a  gold  claim  as  ever.  All 
the  mines  were  monopolized. 

For  the  next  four  years  he  had  alternately  worked  for 
wages  and  prospected  for  himself.  One  year  he  had 
"mushed"  in  the  Copper  River  Country  and  later  in  the 
Tanana.  In  these  explorations  he  went  alone,  and  once  he 
sledged  far  within  the  Arctic  circle  with  only  two  dogs  to 
keep  him  company.  He  became  one  of  the  most  daring  and 
persistent  prospectors  and  yet  he  had  always  been  just  a 
little  too  late.  He  had  never  shared  in  any  of  the  big 
strikes. 

At  last,  after  five  years  of  this  disheartening  life,  he  had 
succeeded  in  breaking  away  from  the  fatal  lure  of  the  North. 
Returning  to  Anacortes  on  Puget  Sound,  he  had  taken  up 
the  threads  of  his  life  at  the  point  where  he  had  dropped 
them,  to  meet  me,  at  Ashcroft,  in  '98,  and  on  my  little 
daughter's  wrist  was  a  bracelet,  a  string  of  nuggets,  which 
represented  all  that  he  had  been  able  to  win  from  the  deso 
late  North. 

He  left  his  youth  in  Alaska.  He  was  an  old  and  broken 
man  when  he  landed  in  Seattle,  a  silent,  gray  and  intro 
spective  philosopher.  Seeking  out  the  cabin  he  had  built 
on  the  Skagit  River,  he  resumed  his  residence  there,  soli 
tary  and  somber.  In  winter  he  cooked  for  a  nearby  lumber 
camp,  in  summer  he  served  as  watchman  for  an  electric 
power  company,  patient,  faithful,  brooding  over  his  books, 
austere,  taciturn,  mystical. 

He  read  much  on  occult  subjects,  and  corresponded  cease 
lessly  with  a  certain  school  of  esoteric  philosophy,  reaching 

350 


"Cavanagh"  and  "Winds  of  Destiny" 

at  last  a  lofty  serenity  which  approached  content.  He  wrote 
me  that  the  men  of  the  lumber  camp  spoke  of  him  as  a 
"queer  old  cuss,"  but  that  disturbed  him  not  at  all.  To  me, 
however,  he  uttered  his  mind  freely,  and  as  I  followed  him 
thus,  in  imagination,  remembering  him  as  he  once  was,  my 
graceful  companion  on  the  bright  Iowa  prairie,  my  sense  of 
something  futile  in  his  whole  life  was  deepened  into  pain. 

His  letters  contained  no  complaint.  He  dwelt  mainly 
upon  his  trips  into  the  forest  (occasional  vacations  from  re 
pulsive  labor),  but  I  was  able  to  infer  from  a  word  here 
and  there,  his  detestation  of  the  coarse  jests  and  senseless 
arguments  of  his  "Siwash"  companions.  His  philosophy 
prevented  repining;  but  he  could  not  entirely  conceal  his 
moods  of  loneliness,  of  defeat. 

My  heart  ached  as  I  thought  of  him,  wearing  his  life 
away  in  the  solitude  of  the  forest,  or  in  waiting  on  a  crowd 
of  unthinking  lumber  jacks,  but  I  could  do  little  to  aid  him. 
I  had  sent  him  books  and  loaned  him  money  whenever  he 
would  accept  it  (which  was  seldom),  and  I  had  offered  each 
year  to  bring  him  back  to  the  Middle  West  and  put  him  on 
a  farm;  but  to  all  these  suggestions  he  continued  to  repeat, 
"I  can't  bring  myself  to  it.  I  can't  return,  a  defeated  ex 
plorer." 

Like  my  uncle  David,  he  preferred  to  walk  the  path  he 
had  chosen,  no  matter  to  what  depth  it  might  descend. 

Not  long  after  this  meeting  with  Ben  and  while  I  was 
still  absorbed  in  youthful  memories,  dreaming  of  my  prairie 
comrades,  a  letter  came  to  me  from  Blanche  Babcock, 
telling  me  that  her  brother  Burton,  my  boyhood  chum,  my 
companion  on  The  Long  Trail  to  the  Yukon,  had  crossed 
the  Wide  Dark  River,  and  with  this  news,  a  sense  of  heavy 
loss  darkened  my  day.  It  was  as  if  a  part,  and  no  small 
part,  of  my  life  had  slipped  away  from  me,  irrecoverably, 
into  a  soundless  abyss. 

For  more  than  forty  years  this  singular  soul  had  been  a 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

subject  of  my  care  (at  times  he  had  been  closer  to  me  than 
my  own  brother) ,  and  now  he  had  vanished  from  the  tangi 
ble  realities  of  his  mountain  home  into  the  unmapped  region 
whose  blind  trails  we  had  so  often  manfully  discussed. 

By  all  the  laws  which  his  family  recognized,  his  life  was 
x  a  failure.  To  Ben  Roberts  he  was  a  derelict — and  yet  to  me 
a  kind  of  elemental  dignity  lay  in  the  attitude  he  had  main 
tained  when  surrounded  by  coarse  and  ignorant  workmen. 
He  remained  unmoved,  uncontaminated.  His  mind  inhab 
ited  a  calm  inner  region  beyond  the  reach  of  any  coarse 
word  or  mocking  phrase.  Growing  ever  more  mystical  as 
he  grew  older  he  had  gone  his  lonely  way  bent  and  gray  and 
silent,  a  student  of  the  forest  and  the  stream.  So  far  as  I 
know  he  never  uttered  a  bitter  or  despairing  word,  and 
when  the  final  great  boundary  river  confronted  him  he 
entered  it  with  the  same  courage  with  which  he  ferried  the 
Yukon  or  crossed  the  ice  fields  of  Iskoot. 

It  happened  that  on  the  day  this  news  came  to  me  one 
of  my  Chicago  friends  sent  their  beautiful  motor  car  to 
fetch  Zulime  and  me  to  the  opera,  and  as  the  children  saw 
us  in  our  evening  dress,  they  cried  out,  "Oh  papa,  mama  is  a 
queen  and  you  look  like  a  king!"  Thus  it  happened  that 
I  rode  away  in  a  luxury  which  I  had  not  earned  at  the  very 
moment  when  my  faithful  trail-mate,  after  toiling  all  his 
life,  was  passing  to  his  grave  wifeless,  childless  and  un 
known. 

"I  wish  I  could  have  shared  just  a  little  of  my  good  for 
tune  with  him,"  I  said  to  Zulime,  who  really  was  as  stately 
as  a  queen.  But  the  best  of  all  my  possessions  I  would  not, 
could  not,  share  with  any  one — I  mean  the  adoration  of  my 
little  daughters  to  whom  I  possessed  the  majesty  of  an 
emperor. 

"Here  his  trail  ends.    Here  by  the  landing  I  wait  the 

same  oar — the  slow,  silent  one. 
We  each  go  alone— no  man  with  another, 
352 


Cavanagh"  and  "Winds  of  Destiny" 

Each  into  the  gloom  of  the  swift,  black  flood. 
Burt,  it  is  hard,  but  here  we  must  sever. 
The  gray  boatman  waits,  and  you — you  go  first. 
All  is  dark  over  there  where  the  dim  boat  is  rocking, 
But  that  is  no  matter — no  trailer  need  fear, 
For  clearly  we're  told,  the  powers  which  lead  us, 
Will  govern  the  game  till  the  end  of  the  day. 
Good-by !— Here  the  trail  ends!" 


Christmas  came  this  year  with  special  significance.  Two 
pairs  of  eager  eyes  now  peered  at  all  bundles  which  came 
into  the  house.  The  faith  and  love  and  eager  hope  of  my 
daughters  made  amends  for  the  world's  lack  of  interest  in 
my  writings.  They  and  their  mother  were  my  wealth, 
their  love  compensated  me  for  the  slender  dribble  of  my 
royalties. 

"Our  Christmas  shall  be  as  happy  as  that  of  any  mil 
lionaire,"  was  the  thought  which  actuated  me  in  the  pur 
chase  and  decoration  of  our  tree.  Wealth  was  highly  de 
sirable,  but  absurd  as  it  may  seem  I  had  no  desire  to  change 
places  with  any  merchant  or  banker.  The  foolish  notion 
that  something  historical  in  my  work  made  it  worth  while, 
supported  me  in  my  toil.  It  was  a  hazy  kind  of  comfort,  I 
will  concede,  but  I  wrapped  myself  in  it,  and  stole  away 
out  into  the  street  to  buy  and  sneak  a  Christmas  tree  up 
the  back  stairs.  It  was  a  noble  tree,  warranted  to  reach  the 
ceiling  of  our  library. 

Father  came  down  from  Wisconsin  and  Franklin  came  up 
from  Oklahoma  to  help  me  decorate  it,  and  when,  on  Christ 
mas  morning,  they  both  rose  with  me,  and  went  down  to 
light  the  candles,  they  were  almost  as  gleeful  as  I.  Mary 
Isabel  was  awake  and  piping  from  the  top  of  the  stairs,  "Is 
it  time,  papa?  Can  we  come  now,  papa?"  and  at  last  when 
the  tower  of  glory  was  alight  I  called  back,  "Yes,  now  you 
may  all  come." 

353 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

Slowly  she  descended  step  by  step,  clinging  to  her  mother, 
who  was  carrying  Constance.  Very  slowly  the  procession 
approached,  for  the  little  voluptuary  in  front  was  loath  as 
well  as  eager — avid  to  enjoy  yet  hesitating  to  devour. 
Suddenly  she  saw,  and  into  her  face  flamed  an  expression  of 
wonder,  of  awe,  of  adoration,  a  look  such  as  a  cherub  angel 
might  wear  while  confronting  The  Great  White  Throne,  a 
kind  of  rapture,  humble  yet  exultant. 

Silently  she  crept  toward  the  center  of  the  room,  turning 
her  eyes  from  this  and  to  that  unearthly  splendor,  yet 
always  bringing  them  back  to  rest  upon  the  faces  of  the 
dollies,  sitting  so  still  and  so  radiant  beneath  the  glittering 
boughs.  At  last  with  a  little  gasping  cry  of  joy  she  seized 
the  largest  and  most  splendid  of  these  wondrous  beings  and 
clasped  it  to  her  breast,  while  Constance  sat  silent  with 
her  awe. 

Their  Christmas  was  complete.  Another  shining  mark 
had  been  set  in  the  upward  slope  of  their  happy  march  1 
Nothing,  not  even  Death  himself,  can  rob  me  of  that 
precious  memory. 


354 


CHAPTER   TWENTY-FOUR 

The    Old    Homestead    Suffers 
Disaster 

THE  summer  of  1912,  so  stormy  in  a  political  sense  was 
singularly  serene  and  happy  for  us.  The  old  house 
had  been  received  back  into  favor.  It  was  beloved  by  us 
all  but  especially  was  it  dear  to  my  children.  To  Mary 
Isabel  it  possessed  a  value  which  it  could  not  have  to 
any  of  us,  for  it  was  her  birth-place  and  she  knew  every 
stick  and  stone  of  it.  To  her  it  had  all  the  glamor  of  a 
childhood  home  in  summer  time. 

On  Sunday,  October  6,  we  began  to  plan  our  return  to  the 
city,  and  as  we  sat  about  our  fire  that  night  the  big  room 
never  looked  so  warm,  so  homelike,  sp  permanent.  The 
deep  fireplace  was  ablaze  with  light,  and  the  walls  packed 
with  books  and  hung  with  pictures  spoke  of  a  realized 
ideal.  On  the  tall  settee  (which  I  had  built  myself),  lay 
a  richly-colored  balletta  Navajo  blanket,  one  that  I  had 
bought  of  a  Flathead  Indian  in  St.  Ignatius.  Others  from 
Zuni  and  Ganado  covered  the  floor.  Over  the  piano 
"Apple  Blossom  Time,"  a  wedding  present  from  John  En- 
necking  glowed  like  a  jewel  in  the  light  of  the  quaint  electric 
candles  which  had  been  set  in  the  sockets  of  hammered 
brass  sconces.  In  short,  the  place  had  the  mellow  charm  of 
a  completed  home,  and  I  said  to  Zulime  "There  isn't  much 
more  to  do  to  it.  It  is  rude  and  queer,  a  mixture  of  Paris, 
Boston,  and  the  Wild  West;  but  it  belongs  to  us."  It  was 

355 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

in  truth  a  union  of  what  we  both  represented,  including  our 
poverty,  for  it  was  all  cheap  and  humble. 

My  father,  white-haired,  eighty-two  years  of  age  was 
living  with  us  again,  basking  in  the  light  of  our  fire  and 
smiling  at  his  grandchildren,  who  with  lithe  limbs  and  sweet 
young  voices  were  singing  and  circling  before  him.  I  was 
glad  to  have  him  back  in  mother's  room,  and  to  him  and 
to  those  who  were  to  be  his  care-takers  for  the  winter  I 
gravely  repeated,  "I  want  everything  kept  just  as  it  is. 
I  want  to  feel  that  we  can  come  back  to  it  at  any  time  and 
find  every  object  in  place,  including  the  fire." 

To  which  father  replied,  "I  don't  want  to  change  it.  It 
suits  me." 

The  children,  darting  out  of  the  music-room  (which  was 
the  "dressing-room"  of  their  stage),  swung  their  Japanese 
lanterns,  enacting  once  again  their  pretty  little  play,  and 
then  our  guests  rose  two  by  two  and  went  away.  Zulime 
led  the  march  to  bed,  the  lights  were  turned  out  and  the 
clear,  crisp,  odorous  October  night  closed  over  our  scene. 

As  I  was  about  to  leave  the  low-ceiled  library,  I  took  an 
other  look  at  it  saying  to  myself,  "It  seems  absurd  to  aban 
don  this  roomy,  human  habitation  for  a  cramped  little  dwell 
ing  on  a  city  lot."  But  with  a  sense  of  what  the  city  offered 
by  way  of  compensation,  I  climbed  the  old-fashioned, 
crooked,  narrow  stairway  to  my  bed  in  the  chamber  over 
the  music-room,  content  to  say  good-by  for  the  winter.  .  .  . 

It  was  dusky  dawn  when  I  awoke,  with  a  sense  of  alarm, 
unable  to  tell  what  had  awakened  me.  For  several  seconds 
I  lay  in  confusion  and  vague  suspense.  Then  a  cry,  a  strange 
cry — a  woman's  scream — arose,  followed  by  a  rush  of  feet. 
Other  cries,  and  the  shrieks  of  children  succeeded  close, 
one  upon  the  other. 

My  first  thought  was,  "Constance  has  fallen."  I  sprang 
from  my  bed  and  was  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  room 

356 


The  Old  Homestead  Suffers  Disaster 

when  I  heard  Zulime  cross  the  floor  beneath  me,  and  a 
moment  later  she  called  up  the  stairway,  "Hamlin,  Fan 
has  set  the  house  on  fire!" 

My  heart  was  gripped  as  if  by  an  icy  hand  for  I  knew 
how  inflammable  the  whole  building  was,  and  without  stop 
ping  to  put  on  coat  or  slippers,  I  ran  swiftly  down  the 
stairs.  As  I  entered  the  sitting-room  so  silent,  so  peaceful, 
so  undisturbed,  it  seemed  that  my  alarm  was  only  a  part 
of  a  dream  till  the  sobbing  of  my  daughters  and  my  wife's 
voice  at  the  telephone  calling  for  help,  convinced  me  of  the 
frightful  reality.  I  heard,  too,  the  ominous  crackling  of 
flames  in  the  kitchen. 

Pushing  open  the  swinging  door  I  confronted  a  wall  of 
smoke.  One-half  of  the  floor  was  already  consumed,  and 
along  the  linoleum  a  sharply-defined  line  of  fire  told  that 
it  rose  from  burning  oil — and  yet  I  could  not  quite  believe 
it,  even  then.  It  was  like  a  scene  in  a  motion  picture  play. 

My  first  thought  was  to  check,  to  hold  back  the  flames, 
till  help  came.  The  garden  hose  was  lying  out  under  a 
tree  (I  had  put  it  there  the  day  before)  and  with  desperate 
haste  I  hurried  to  attach  it  to  the  water  pipes.  I  saw  father 
in  the  yard,  but  he  uttered  no  word.  We  were  each  thinking 
the  same  thought — "The  old  homestead  is  doomed.  Our 
life  here  is  ended." 

The  hose  was  heavy  and  sanely  perverse,  and  it  seemed 
an  age  before  I  had  the  water  turned  on.  Catching  up  the 
nozzle  I  approached  the  kitchen  door.  The  thin  stream 
had  no  effect,  and  the  heat  was  so  intense  I  could  not  face  it. 
Throwing  down  the  hose  I  reentered  the  house. 

The  children,  hysterical  with  fright,  were  just  leaving 
by  the  east  door  and  Zulime  was  upstairs.  Opening  the 
front  door  I  stepped  out  upon  the  porch  to  call  for  help. 
The  beauty  of  the  morning,  its  stillness,  its  serenity,  its 
odorous  opulence,  struck  upon  my  senses  with  a  kind  of 

357 


A  Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

ironic  benignancy,  as  if  to  say,  "Why  agonize  over  so 
small  a  thing?" 

I  shouted  "Fire!"  and  my  voice  went  ringing  far  up 
the  street.  I  cried  out  again,  a  third  time,  a  fourth,  but 
no  one  answered,  no  one  appeared,  and  behind  me  the 
crackling  roar  of  the  flames  increased.  In  despair  I  turned 
back  into  the  sitting-room. 

It  had  been  arranged  between  Zulime  and  myself  that 
in  case  of  fire  (once  the  children  were  safe),  she  was  to 
secure  the  silverware  and  her  jewelry  whilst  I  flew  to  col 
lect  my  manuscripts. 

With  this  thought  in  my  mind,  and  believing  that  I  had 
but  a  few  minutes  in  which  to  work,  I  ran  up  the  stairs 
to  my  study  and  began  gathering  such  of  my  manuscripts 
as  had  no  duplicates.  As  I  thought  of  the  hundreds  of 
letters  from  my  literary  friends,  of  the  many  family  records, 
of  the  innumerable  notes,  pictures,  keepsakes,  souvenirs  and 
mementoes  which  had  been  assembling  there  for  a  quarter 
of  a  century,  I  became  confused,  indecisive.  It  was  so 
hard  to  choose.  At  last  I  caught  up  a  sheaf  of  unpub 
lished  stories  which  filled  one  drawer,  and  beating  off  the 
screen  of  the  north  window  threw  the  manuscripts  out 
upon  the  grass. 

A  neighbor's  wife,  quick  to  understand  the  meaning  of 
my  anxiety  about  these  sheets,  ran  to  her  home  across  the 
way  and  bringing  a  valise,  began  to  stuff  them  into  it. 
Having  cleared  my  desk  of  its  most  valuable  papers  I 
hurried  to  my  dressing-room  to  secure  shoes  and  trousers; 
but  by  this  time  the  hall  was  full  of  the  most  nauseating 
smoke.  The  fire  having  swept  entirely  through  the  library, 
was  burning  the  front  porch.  My  escape  by  way  of  the 
stairway  was  cut  off.  Blinded  and  gasping  I  gave  up  the 
search  for  clothes  and  turned  back  into  my  study. 

I  was  not  in  the  least  scared ;  on  the  contrary,  I  was  filled 

358 


The  Old  Homestead  Suffers  Disaster 

with  a  kind  of  fatalistic  rage.  In  imagination  I  saw  the  old 
house,  with  all  that  it  meant  to  me,  in  ruins.  I  saw  the 
great  elms  and  maples  scorched,  dead,  the  tall  black  locust 
burned  to  a  ship's  mast.  As  I  peered  from  the  window,  a 
neighbor  called  earnestly,  " You'd  better  get  off  there;  the 
whole  house  is  going." 

From  the  window  I  could  see  the  villagers  rapidly  as 
sembling,  and  not  knowing  how  far  advanced  the  flames 
might  be  I  yielded  to  the  advice  of  my  friend,  and  swinging 
myself  from  the  window  dropped  to  the  ground. 

My  next  care  was  for  the  children.  I  could  hear  them 
crying  frantically  for  "papa!"  and  I  hurried  to  where  they 
stood  cowering  in  the  door  of  the  barn.  "O,  papa,  put  it 
out.  I  don't  want  it  to  burn.  Put  it  out!"  moaned  Mary 
Isabel  with  passionate  intensity. 

Her  faith  in  her  father  had  an  infinite  pathos  at  the 
moment.  She  loved  the  house.  It  was  a  part  of  her  very 
brain  and  blood.  To  have  it  burn  was  a  kind  of  outrage. 
Little  Connie,  five  years  old,  with  chattering  teeth,  joined 
her  pleading  cry,  "Can't  you  put  it  out,  papa?"  she  asked 
piteously. 

"No,"  I  answered  sadly.  "Papa  can  not  put  it  out. 
Nobody  can.  You  must  say  good-by  to  our  dear  old  home:" 

Wrapping  a  quilt  about  her  I  started  across  the  road 
toward  my  neighbor's  porch.  The  yard  was  full  of  my 
fellow-citizens,  and  young  men  were  heroically  dragging  out 
smoking  furniture  from  the  lower  floor,  while  over  in  the 
Sander's  yard  piles  of  books,  bedding  and  furniture  were 
accumulating.  It  was  all  curiously  familiar  and  typical. 

In  the  full  belief  that  the  homestead  would  soon  be  a 
heap  of  charcoal,  we  took  the  children  back  into  our  friend's 
dining-room.  "Pull  down  the  curtain,"  entreated  Zulime, 
"we  don't  want  to  see  the  old  ptece  go." 

Helpless  for  lack  of  street  clothing,  with  my  children  on 

359 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

my  knees,  I  sat  in  silence,  noting  the  flickering  glare  of  the 
light  on  the  walls,  and  hearing  the  shouts  of  the  firemen  and 
the  sound  of  their  axes. 

Huldah,  our  neighbor's  daughter,  entered.  "They're 
checking  it!"  she  exclaimed.  "It  is  under  control." 

This  seemed  incredible,  but  it  was  confirmed  by  George 
Dudley,  who  came  in  bringing  my  shoes  and  a  suit  of  my 
clothing. 

When  at  last  I  was  fully  clothed  and  could  go  out  into 
the  street  I  was  amazed  to  find  a  part  of  the  house  stand 
ing.  Most  of  the  east  wing  seemed  quite  untouched,  except 
of  smoke  and  water.  The  west  wing  and  front  porch  were 
in  black  disarray,  but  the  roof  held  its  place  and  the 
trees  seemed  scarcely  scorched.  A  few  firemen,  among 
them  the  village  plumber,  the  young  banker,  and  a  dentist, 
were  on  guard,  watchfully  intent  that  the  flames  should  not 
break  out  again.  The  sun  was  rising  gloriously  over  the 
hills.  The  fire,  my  fire,  was  over. 

No  doubt  this  event  appeared  most  trivial  to  the  travelers 
in  a  passing  train.  From  the  car  windows  it  was  only  a 
column  of  smoke  in  the  edge  of  a  small  village.  Our  dis 
aster  offered,  indeed,  only  a  mild  sensation  to  the  occu 
pants  of  an  early  automobile  party,  but  to  my  father,  to 
Zulime  and  to  the  children,  it  was  a  desolate  and  appalling 
ruin.  They  had  grown  to  love  this  old  house  foolishly,  il- 
logically,  for  it  was  neither  beautiful  nor  historic,  nor 
spacious.  It  was  only  a  commonplace  frame  cottage,  in 
wrought  with  memories  and  associations,  but  it  was  home — 
all  we  had. 

The  yard  was  piled  with  furniture,  half-burned,  soaked 
and  malodorous,  but  none  of  my  manuscripts  were  in  sight. 
I  had  expected  to  find  them  scattered  like  feathers  across 
the  garden  or  trampled  into  the  muddy  sward.  In  reply 
to  my  question  my  friend  Dudley  replied,  "They're  all 

360 


The  Old  Homestead  Suffers  Disaster 

safe.  I  had  the  boys  carry  them  down  in  blankets.  You'll 
find  them  in  the  barn." 

As  I  moved  about  silently,  studying  the  ruins,  the  kindli 
est  of  my  neighbors  said,  "You'll  have  to  entirely  rebuild." 
And  to  this  a  carpenter,  a  skilled  and  honest  workman, 
agreed.  "The  cheapest  thing  to  do  is  to  tear  it  all  down 
and  start  from  the  foundation." 

Slowly,  minutely,  I  studied  the  ruin.  Surely  here  was 
gruesome  change!  Black,  ill-smelling,  smoking  debris  lay 
where  our  pretty  dining-room  had  been.  The  library  with  all 
my  best  books  (many  of  them  autographed)  was  equally 
desolate,  heaped  with  steaming,  charred  masses  of  tables, 
chairs,  rugs  and  fallen  plaster.  I  thought  of  it  as  it  had 
been  the  night  before,  with  the  soft  lights  of  the  candles 
falling  upon  my  children  dancing  with  swinging  lanterns.  I 
recalled  Ennecking's  radiant  spring  painting,  and  Steele's 
"Bloom  of  the  Grape,"  which  glowed  above  the  mantle, 
and  my  heart  almost  failed  me — "Is  this  the  end  of  my 
life  in  Wisconsin?" 

For  twenty  years  this  little  village  had  been  the  place 
of  my  family  altar,  not  because  it  was  remarkable  in  any 
way,  but  because  since  1850  it  had  been  the  habitat  of 
my  mother's  people  and  because  it  was  filled  with  my  father's 
pioneer  friends.  "Is  it  worth  while  to  rebuild?"  I  asked 
myself.  For  the  time  I  lost  direction.  I  had  no  plan. 

The  sight  of  my  white-haired  father  wandering  about  the 
yard,  dazed,  bewildered,  his  eyes  filled  with  a  look  of  de 
spair  at  last  decided  me.  Realizing  that  this  was  his  true 
home;  that  no  other  roof  could  have  the  same  appeal,  and 
he  could  not  be  transplanted,  I  resolved  to  cover  his  head; 
to  make  it  possible  for  him  to  live  out  his  few  remaining 
years  under  this  roof  with  his  granddaughters.  "For  his 
sake  and  the  children's  sake,"  I  announced  to  Zulime,  "I 
shall  begin  at  once  to  clear  away  and  restore.  Before  the 

361 


A  Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

winter  comes  you  shall  all  be  back  in  the  old  House.  Per 
haps  we  can  eat  our  Thanksgiving  dinner  in  the  restored 
dining-room." 

Whether  she  fully  shared  my  desire  to  rebuild  or  whether 
she  believed  in  my  ability  to  carry  out  my  plan  so  quickly 
I  can  not  say.  In  such  matters  she  was  not  decisive — she 
rested  on  my  stubborn  will. 

The  day  came  on — glorious,  odorous,  golden — but  we 
saw  little  of  its  beauty.  Engaged  in  digging  the  family 
silver  out  of  the  embers,  and  collecting  my  scattered  books 
and  papers  I  had  no  time  to  look  at  the  sky.  Occasionally, 
as  I  looked  up  from  my  work  I  saw  my  little  daughters 
playing  with  childish  intentness  among  the  fallen  leaves 
in  my  neighbor's  yard,  and  in  mistaken  confidence  I  re 
marked  what  a  blessing  it  is  that  childhood  can  so  easily 
forget  disaster. 

I  did  not  realize  then,  nor  till  many  months  after,  how 
profound  the  shock  had  been  to  them.  For  years  after 
the  event  they  started  at  every  unusual  sound  and  woke  at 
night  screaming  of  fire. 

All  that  day  and  all  the  days  of  the  week  which  followed 
they  played  with  the  same  singular  insect-like  absorption 
and  at  last  I  began  to  get  some  notion  of  their  horror. 
They  refused  to  enter  the  yard.  "I  don't  want  to  see  it," 
Mary  Isabel  wailed.  Then  she  asked,  "Will  it  ever  be  home 
for  us  again?" 

''Yes,"  I  answered  with  final  determination.  "I'll  put  it 
back  just  as  it  was  before  the  fire  came.  It  shall  be  nicer 
than  ever  when  I  am  done." 

Before  night  I  had  engaged  a  crew  of  men  to  clear  away. 
Thereafter  I  lived  like  a  man  in  a  tunnel.  I  saw  almost 
nothing  of  the  opulent,  golden  sunshine,  nothing  of  the 
exquisite  foliage,  nothing  of  the  far  hills,  purple  with  In 
dian  summer  haze.  Busily  sorting  my  burned  books  or 

362 


The  Old  Homestead  Suffers  Disaster 

spreading  out  my  treasured  rugs,  I  toiled  as  long  as  light 
lasted.  There  were  a  few  pleasant  surprises.  From  one 
charred  frame  the  face  of  Frank  Norris,  miraculously  fresh 
and  handsome  and  smiling,  looked  out  through  smoked  and 
broken  glass.  In  one  corner  of  the  sideboard  (decorated 
by  Thompson-Seton),  a  part  of  the  silver  bearing  my 
mother's  initials  lay  quite  unharmed,  though  all  of  the 
pieces  on  the  top  were  melted  into  a  flat  mass  of  bullion. 
Autographed  books  from  Howells,  Riley,  Gilbert  Parker, 
Conan  Doyle,  Arnold  Bennett,  fell  to  pieces  in  my  hand, 
or  showed  so  deep  a  stain  of  smoke  as  to  make  their  re- 
binding  impossible.  My  best  Navajo  rug,  a  fine  example 
of  the  ancient  weaving,  was  a  frail  cinder  on  the  back  of  the 
charred  settee,  and  a  Hopi  ceremonial  dress  which  hung 
upon  the  wall  was  a  blackened  shred. 

All  these  things  had  small  money  value,  and  to  many 
men,  would  have  represented  so  interest  whatsoever,  but 
to  me  they  were  precious.  They  were  a  part  of  my  life. 
To  burn  them  was  to  char  a  section  of  my  brain.  Pitiful 
possessions!  Worthless  rags!  And  yet  they  were  the 
best  I  could  show  after  thirty  years  of  labor  with  the  pen! 

My  father's  condition  troubled  me  most.  To  have  him 
rendered  homeless  at  eighty-two  with  winter  coming  on 
seemed  to  me  an  intolerable  cruelty,  and  so  with  a  driving 
haste  I  set  to  work  with  my  own  hands  to  clear  away  and 
restore.  Wielding  the  wrecking  bar  and  the  spade  each 
day,  I  toiled  like  a  hired  man — even  after  the  carpenters 
were  gone  at  night  I  scraped  paint  and  shoveled  rubbish. 

Let  no  one  pity  me!  A  curious  pleasure  came  with  all 
this,  for  it  seemed  to  advance  the  reconstruction  with  double 
swiftness. 

At  the  end  of  the  week  I  sent  my  wife  and  the  children 
back  to  their  city  home,  and  thereafter  I  had  but  one  in 
terest,  one  diversion — to  plan  and  execute  my  rebuilding. 

363 


A  Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

To  close  the  walls,  to  make  the  rooms  secure  against  wind 
and  rain  was  imperative. 

The  insurance  inspector  came  pleasantly  to  the  rescue, 
and  with  a  small  balance  in  the  bank  I  hired  roofers, 
plumbers,  carpenters,  masons,  till  the  street  resounded  with 
their  clamor.  In  a  week  I  had  the  rooms  cleared,  the  doors 
and  windows  closed,  and  my  father  living  in  one  corner  of 
the  house,  whilst  I  camped  down  in  my  study.  Water- 
soaked,  ill-smelling,  but  inhabitable,  the  old  house  again 
possessed  a  light  and  a  hearth. 

"The  children  and  their  grandsire  shall  eat  Thanksgiving 
dinner  in  the  rebuilt  dining-room,"  was  my  secret  senti 
mental  resolution.  "To  do  that  will  turn  a  wail  into  a 
song — a  disaster  into  a  poem." 

All  very  foolish,  you  say.  No  doubt,  but  it  interested 
me  and  I  was  of  an  age  when  very  few  things  interested 
me  vitally.  With  clothing  black  as  soot,  with  hands  brown 
with  stain  and  skinned  and  swollen  and  feverish,  I  kept 
to  my  job  without  regard  to  Sundays  or  the  ordinary  hours 
of  labor.  I  was  not  seeking  sympathy, — I  was  renewing 
my  youth.  I  was  both  artist  and  workman.  My  muscles 
hardened,  my  palms  broadened,  my  appetite  became  prodi 
gious.  I  lost  all  fear  of  indigestion  and  ate  anything  which 
my  friend  Dudley  was  good  enough  to  provide.  I  even 
drank  coffee  at  every  opportunity,  and  went  so  far  as  to 
eat  doughnuts  and  pancakes  at  breakfast !  To  be  deliciously 
hungry  as  of  old  was  heartening. 

The  weather  continued  merciful.  Each  day  the  sun  rose 
red  and  genial,  and  at  noon  the  warm  haze  of  Indian  sum 
mer  trailed  along  the  hills — though  I  had  little  time  in 
which  to  enjoy  it.  Each  sunset  marked  a  new  stanza  in 
my  poem,  a  completed  phrase,  a  recovered  figure.  "Our 
small  affairs  have  shut  out  the  light  of  the  sun,"  I  said  to 
father,  "the  political  situation  has  lost  all  interest  for  me." 

364 


The  Old  Homestead  Suffers  Disaster 

Bare,  clean  and  sweet,  the  library  and  music-room  at 
last  were  ready  for  furniture.  All  these  must  be  replaced. 
A  hurried  trip  to  the  city,  three  days  of  determined  shop 
ping  with  Zulime,  and  a  stream  of  new  goods  (necessary  to 
refurnish),  began  to  set  toward  the  threshold.  The  draymen 
plied  busily  between  the  station  and  the  gate. 

By  November  first  my  father  and  I  were  camping  in 
the  library  and  cooking  our  own  food  in  the  dining-room. 
We  rose  each  day  before  dawn  and  ate  our  bacon  and  coffee 
while  yet  the  stars  twinkled  in  the  west,  and  both  of  us 
were  reminded  of  the  frosty  mornings  on  our  Iowa  farm, 
when  we  used  to  eat  by  candle-light  in  order  to  husk  corn 
by  starlight.  My  hands  felt  as  they  used  to  feel  when,  worn 
by  the  rasping  husks,  they  burned  with  fever.  Heavy  as 
hams,  they  refused  to  hold  a  pen,  and  my  mind  refused  to 
compose  even  letters — but  the  pen  was  not  needed.  "My 
poem  is  composed  of  wood  and  steel,"  I  remarked  to  Dudley. 

At  last  the  yard  was  cleared  of  its  charred  rubbish,  the 
porch  restored  to  its  old  foundation,  and  the  new  metal  roof, 
broad-spreading  and  hospitable,  gleamed  like  snow  in  dusk 
and  dawn,  and  from  the  uncurtained  windows  our  relighted 
lamps  called  to  the  world  that  the  Garland  household  was 
about  to  reassemble  and  the  author  permitted  himself  to 
straighten  up.  Changing  to  my  city  garments  I  took  the 
train  for  Chicago,  promising  to  bring  the  children  with  me 
when  our  Thanksgiving  turkey  was  fatted  for  the  fire. 

My  daughters  listened  eagerly  to  my  tale  of  the  new 
house,  but  expressed  a  fear  of  sleeping  in  it.  This  fear 
I  determined  to  expel. 

On  the  Saturday  before  Thanksgiving  I  rejoined  my 
workmen,  finding  the  house  in  a  worse  state  of  disarray 
than  when  I  had  last  seen  it.  The  floors  were  littered  with 
dust  and  shavings,  and  in  the  dining-room  my  father, 
deeply  discouraged,  was  gloomily  cooking  his  breakfast  on 

365 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

an  oil  stove  set  in  the  middle  of  the  floor.  "It'll  take  another 
month  to  finish  the  job,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  no  it  won't,"  I  replied.    "It  won't  take  a  week. 

Fortunately  the  stain  on  the  floor  was  dry  and  with  the 
aid  of  two  good  men  I  finished  the  woodwork  and  beat 
the  rugs.  In  a  couple  of  days  the  lower  house  was  livable. 

On  Wednesday  at  five  o'clock  I  went  to  the  train,  leaving 
the  electric  lights  all  ablaze  and  the  fire  snapping  in  the 
chimney.  It  looked  amazingly  comfortable,  restored,  set 
tled,  and  I  was  confident  the  children  would  respond  to  its 
cheer. 

"Is  it  all  made  new?"  they  asked  wistfully. 

"Wait  and  see!"  I  confidently  replied. 

The  night  was  cold  and  dark  but  as  they  neared  the  old 
house  its  windows  winked  a  cheery  welcome.  "Why,  it 
looks  just  as  it  used  to!"  exclaimed  Mary  Isabel. 

"There  are  lights  in  our  room!"  exclaimed  Constance. 

"Run  ahead,  and  knock,"  I  urged. 

She  hung  back.    "I'm  afraid,"  she  said. 

"So  am  I,"  echoed  Connie. 

The  new  metal  roof  gleaming  like  frost  interested  them 
as  they  entered  the  gate. 

"Why,  the  porch  is  all  here!"  shouted  Constance. 

"But  the  screens  are  off,"  commented  Mary  Isabel. 

"Knock!"  I  commanded. 

Reaching  up  to  the  shining  old  brass  knocker  she  banged 
it  sharply. 

The  house  awoke!  White-haired  old  father  came  to  the 
door  and,  first  of  all,  the  children  sprang  to  his  arms. 

Then  as  they  looked  around  they  shouted  with  joy. 
"Why,  it's  just  as  it  was — only  nicer,"  was  their  verdict. 

While  Zulime  looked  keenly  and  smilingly  around,  Con 
nie  ran  from  settee  to  bookcase.  "Everything  is  here — 
our  books,  the  fireplace." 

366 


The  Old  Homestead  Suffers  Disaster 

"Isn't  it  wonderful!"  Mary  Isabel  exclaimed. 

After  greeting  father  Zulime  surveyed  the  result  of  my 
six  weeks'  toil  with  critical  but  approving  eyes.  "I  like  it. 
It's  much  better  than  I  expected.  It  is  wonderful.  But 
we  must  have  new  curtains  for  the  windows,"  she  added, 
with  the  housewife's  attention  to  details. 

The  children  danced  through  the  brilliantly  lighted  rooms, 
but  declined  to  go  into  the  dining-room  or  to  open  the  door 
to  the  kitchen  which  they  remembered  only  as  a  mass  of 
black  embers  and  steaming  ashes.  I  did  not  urge  them  to 
do  so.  On  the  contrary,  I  gathered  them  round  me  on  the 
restored  hearth  and  talked  of  the  Thanksgiving  dinner  of 
the  morrow. 

As  the  hour  for  bedtime  came  Connie's  eyes  grew  big 
and  dark,  and  every  small  unusual  sound  startled  her. 
Daddy's  presence  at  last  reassured  them  both  and  they 
went  to  sleep  and,  with  only  one  or  two  restless  intervals, 
slumbered  till  daylight. 

Two  of  our  neighbors — two  capable  women,  came  in  next 
morning  to  help,  and  in  a  few  hours  the  windows  were  cur 
tained,  the  linen  laid  out  and  the  turkey  in  the  oven.  Under 
Zulime's  hands  the  rooms  bloomed  into  homeliness.  The 
kitchen  things  fell  into  orderly  array.  Pictures  took  their 
places  on  the  walls,  little  knick-knacks  which  had  been 
brought  from  the  city  were  set  on  the  mantels  and  book 
cases,  and  when  our  guests  arrived  they  each  and  all 
exclaimed,  "No  one  would  ever  know  you'd  had  a  firel" 

At  one  o'clock  the  cooks,  the  children  and  Zulime  all 
agreed  that  the  fowl  was  ready  for  the  carver  and  so  we 
all  assembled  in  the  new  and  larger  dining-room.  No 
formal  Thanksgiving  was  spoken,  but  vaguely  forming  in 
my  mind  was  a  poem  which  should  express  our  joy  and 
gratitude.  My  brother's  seat  was  empty  and  so  were  those 
of  other  loved  ones,  but  we  did  not  dwell  upon  these  sad 

367 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

things.  I  was  living,  working  and  planning  now  for  the 
vivid  souls  of  my  daughters  whose  glowing  cheeks  and 
laughing  eyes  repaid  me  for  all  my  toil.  For  them  I  had 
rebuilt  this  house — for  them  and  their  grandsire — whose 
trail  was  almost  at  its  end.  How  happy  he  was  in  their 
presence!  They,  too,  were  happy  because  they  were 
young,  the  sun  was  shining  and  their  home  was  magicalfy 
restored. 

The  happiest  time  of  all  was  at  night,  when  the  evening 
shadows  closed  round  the  friendly  walls,  and  the  trees 
sighed  in  the  chill  wind — for  beside  the  fire  we  gathered,  the 
Garlands  and  McClintocks,  in  the  good  old  fashion,  while 
our  neighbors  came  in  to  congratulate  and  rejoice.  All 
the  black  terror  of  the  dismantled  house,  all  the  toil  and 
worry  of  the  months  which  lay  between,  were  forgotten  as 
the  children,  without  a  care,  sang  and  danced  in  the  light 
of  our  new  and  broadened  hearth. 


368 


That  night  as  my  daughters,  "dressed  up"  as  princesses,  danced 
like  fairies  in  the  light  of  our  restored  and  broadened  hearth, 
I  forgot  all  the  toil,  all  the  disheartenment  which  the  burning: 
of  the  house  had  brought  upon  me.  To  them  the  re-built 
homestead  was  only  another  evidence  of  their  Daddy's  magic 
power.  His  lamp  was  not  less  potent  than  Aladdin's. 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-FIVE 
Darkness    Just    Before    the    Dawn 

IN  going  back  over  the  records  of  the  years  1912  and 
1913,  I  can  see  that  my  life  was  lacking  in  "drive."  It 
is  true  I  wrote  two  fairly  successful  novels  which  were  well 
spoken  of  by  my  reviewers  and  in  addition  I  continued  to 
conduct  the  Cliff  Dwellers'  Club  and  to  act  as  one  of  the 
Vice  Presidents  of  the  National  Institute  of  Arts  and  Let 
ters,  but  I  was  very  far  from  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  with 
my  position.  My  life  seemed  dwindling  into  futility.  I 
was  in  physical  pain  much  of  the  time  and  tortured  by  a 
fear  of  the  future. 

Naturally  and  inevitably  the  burden  of  my  increasing 
discontent,  worse  health,  fell  with  sad  reiteration  upon  my 
wife,  who  was  not  only  called  upon  to  endure  poverty,  but 
to  bear  with  a  sick  and  disheartened  husband.  The 
bravery  of  her  smile  served  to  increase  my  sense  of  un- 
worthiness.  Her  very  sweetness,  her  cheerful  acceptance 
of  never-ending  household  drudgery,  was  an  accusation. 

She  no  longer  touched  brush  or  clay,  although  I  strongly 
urged  her  to  sketch  or  model  the  children.  She  had  no 
time,  even  if  she  had  retained  the  will,  to  continue  her  work 
as  an  artist.  With  a  faculty  for  entertaining  handsomely 
and  largely,  with  hosts  of  friends  who  would  have  clustered 
about  her  with  loyal  admiration,  she  remained  the  mistress 
of  a  narrow  home  and  one  more  or  less  incompetent  house 
maid.  All  these  considerations  added  to  my  sense  of 

369 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

weakness  and  made  the  particular  manuscript  upon  which 
I  was  spending  most  of  my  time,  a  piece  of  selfish  folly. 

For  ten  years  I  had  been  working,  from  time  to  time,  on 
an  autobiographical  manuscript  which  I  had  called  by 
various  names,  but  which  had  finally  solidified  into  A  Son 
of  the  Middle  Border.  Even  in  my  days  of  deepest  dis 
couragement  I  turned  most  of  my  energy  to  its  revision. 
In  the  belief  that  it  was  my  final  story  and  with  small 
hope  of  its  finding  favor  in  any  form,  I  toiled  away,  year 
after  year,  finding  in  the  aroused  memories  of  my  youthful 
world  a  respite  from  the  dull  grind  of  my  present. 

My  duties  as  head  of  the  Cliff  Dwellers  and  as  Secretary 
of  The  Theater  Society  tended  to  keep  me  in  Chicago.  My 
lecture  engagements  became  fewer  and  I  dropped  out  or 
Eastern  Club  life,  retaining  only  long  distance  connection 
with  the  world  of  Arts  and  Letters.  In  losing  touch  with 
my  fellows  something  vital  had  gone  out  of  me. 

In  spite  of  all  my  former  protestations,  the  city  began 
to  take  on  the  color  of  Henry  Fuller's  pessimism.  My 
youthful  faith  in  Chicago's  future  as  a  great  literary  center 
had  faded  into  middle-aged  doubt.  One  by  one  its  writers 
were  slipping  away  to  Manhattan.  The  Midland  seemed 
farther  away  from  publishers  than  ever,  "The  current  is 
all  against  us,"  declared  Fuller. 

As  a  man  of  fifty-two  I  found  myself  more  and  more 
discordant  with  my  surroundings.  With  sadness  I  conceded 
that  not  in  my  time  would  any  marked  change  for  the 
better  take  place.  "Such  as  Chicago  now  is,  so  it  will 
remain  during  my  life,"  I  admitted  to  Fuller. 

"Yes,  if  it  doesn't  get  worse,"  was  his  sad  reply. 

I  would  have  put  my  Woodlawn  house  on  sale  in  1912 
had  it  not  been  for  my  father's  instant  protest.  "Don't 
take  Zulime  and  the  children  so  far  away,"  he  pleaded.  "If 
you  move  to  New  York  I  shall  never  see  any  of  you  again. 

370 


Darkness     Just     Before     the     Dawn 

Stay  where  you  are.    Wait  till  I  am  'mustered  out' — it  won't 
be  long  now." 

There  was  no  resisting  this  appeal.  With  a  profound 
sense  of  what  Zulime  and  the  children  meant  to  him,  I 
gave  up  all  thought  of  going  East  and  settled  back  into  my 
groove.  "We  will  remain  where  we  are  so  long  as  father 
lives,"  I  declared  to  my  friends. 

My  wife,  who  had  perceived  with  alarm  my  growing 
discontent  with  Chicago,  was  greatly  relieved  by  this  de 
cision.  To  her  the  thought  of  migration  even  to  the  North 
Side  was  disturbing,  for  it  would  break  her  close  connection 
with  the  circle  whose  center  was  in  her  brother's  studio. 
I  am  not  seeking  to  excuse  my  recreancy  to  The  Middle 
West;  I  am  merely  stating  it  as  a  phase  of  literary  history, 
for  my  case  is  undoubtedly  typical  of  many  other  writers 
who  turned  their  faces  eastward! 

The  plain  truth  is  I  had  reached  an  age  where  I  no  longer 
cared  to  pioneer  even  in  a  literary  sense.  Desirous  of  the 
acceptances  proper  to  a  writer  with  gray  hair  and  a  string 
of  creditable  books,  I  wished  to  go  where  honor  waited.  I 
craved  a  place  as  a  man  of  letters.  That  my  powers  were 
deteriorating  in  the  well-worn  rut  of  my  life  in  Woodlawn 
I  knew  too  well,  and  my  need  of  contact  with  my  fellow 
craftsmen  in  the  East  sharpened.  The  support  and  inspira-  > 
tion  which  come  naturally  to  authors  in  contact  with  their 
kind  were  being  denied  me.  Age  was  bringing  me  no  "har 
vest  home."  In  short,  at  the  very  time  when  I  should  have 
been  most  honored,  most  recompensed,  in  my  work,  I  found 
myself  living  meanly  in  a  mean  street  and  going  about  like 
a  man  of  mean  concerns,  having  little  influence  on  my  art 
or  among  my  fellows. 

That  Chicago  was  still  on  the  border  in  a  literary  sense 
was  sharply  emphasized  when  the  National  Institute  of 
Arts  and  Letters  decided  (after  much  debate),  to  hold  its 
Annual  Meeting  for  1913  in  the  midland  metropolis.  "It 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

is  a  long  way  out  to  Chicago,"  its  Secretary  wrote,  "and 
I  don't  know  how  many  members  we  can  assemble,  but  I 
think  we  shall  be  able  to  bring  twenty-five  at  least.  You 
have  been  appointed  chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Arrange 
ments,  with  full  powers  to  go  ahead." 

The  honor  and  responsibility  of  this  appointment  spurred 
me  to  action.  I  decided  to  accept  and  make  the  meeting 
a  literary  milestone  in  western  history.  My  first  thought 
was  to  make  the  Cliff  Dwellers'  Club  the  host  of  the  occa 
sion,  but  on  further  consideration,  I  reckoned  that  the 
City's  welcome  would  have  greater  weight  if  all  its  literary 
and  artistic  forces  could  be  in  some  way  combined.  To 
bring  this  about  I  directed  letters  to  the  heads  of  seventeen 
clubs  and  educational  organizations,  asking  them  to  meet 
with  me  and  form  a  joint  Reception  Committee. 

This  they  did,  and  in  a  most  harmonious  session  elected 
Hobart  Chatfield-Taylor  chairman.  To  this  Committee  I 
then  said,  "If  we  are  to  have  any  considerable  number  of 
our  distinguished  eastern  authors  and  artists  at  this  dinner 
we  must  make  it  very  easy  for  ^them  to  travel.  We  should 
have  a  special  train  for  them  or  at  least  special  sleeping 
cars  so  that  they  can  come  as  if  in  a  moving  club." 

In  this  plan  I  had  instant  support.  The  sturdy  group  of 
men  who  had  been  so  ready  to  aid  me  in  building  up  the 
Cliff  Dwellers  (men  like  Hutchinson,  Logan,  Glessner, 
Ryerson,  Aldis,  and  Heckmen),  all  took  vital  interest  in 
the  arrangements  for  the  reception  and  dinner.  The  neces 
sary  funds  were  immediately  subscribed,  and  my  report  to 
the  Institute  Council  created  a  fine  feeling  of  enthusiasm  in 
the  ranks  of  both  organizations.  The  success  of  the  meeting 
was  assured.  Some  of  the  oldest  members  wrote,  "It  is  a 
long  way  out  there  but  we  are  coming." 

The  press  of  the  city  responded  generously  and  some  of 
its  editors  perceived  and  stated  the  historical  significance 

372 


Darkness     Just     Before     the     Dawn 

of  this  pilgrimage  of  poets,  artists,  and  historians  to  "the 
sparsely  settled  Border  of  Esthetic  Culture."  A  trainload 
of  men  who  painted,  sculptured  and  composed,  men  who 
were  entirely  concerned  with  the  critical  or  esthetic  side 
of  life,  an  academy  of  arts  and  letters  rolling  westward,  was 
a  new  and  wondrous  phase  of  national  exploration.  The 
invasion  was  also  capable  of  comic  interpretation  and  a 
few  graceless  wags  did  allude  to  it  as  "a  missionary  expe 
dition  to  Darkest  Illinois." 

To  Fuller,  to  Chatfield-Taylor  and  to  me,  this  joke  was 
not  altogether  pleasant.  We  knew  all  too  well  the  feeling 
of  some  of  the  writers  who  were  coming.  Several  of  them 
were  seeing  "the  West"  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives, 
others  had  not  been  in  Chicago  since  the  World's  Fair  in 
'93.  All  were  conscious  of  the  effort  involved  in  reaching 
the  arid  and  unknown  frontier. 

The  entire  Middle  West  had  only  ten  resident  members 
of  the  Institute  although  a  large  proportion  of  its  member 
ship  was  drawn  from  the  Southern  and  Central  Western 
States.  "All  trails  lead  to  New  York  and  there  are  no 
returning  footsteps,"  commented  Fuller.  "Once  a  writer 
or  painter  or  illustrator  pulls  his  stakes  and  sets  out  for 
Manhattan,  Chicago  sees  him  no  more." 

All  this  was  disheartening  to  those  of  us  who,  twenty 
years  before,  had  visioned  Chicago  as  a  shining  center  of 
American  art,  but  we  went  forward  with  our  preparations, 
hoping  that  a  fairly  representative  delegation  could  be 
induced  to  come. 

Some  thirty-five  arrived  safely,  and  the  Dinner  of  Wel 
come  in  Sculpture  Hall  not  only  set  a  milestone  in  the 
progress  of  the  city,  but  was  in  itself  a  beautiful  and  dis 
tinctive  event. 

The  whole  panorama  of  western  settlement  and  its  city 
building  unrolled  before  me,  as  Charles  L.  Hutchinson, 

373 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border' 

President  of  the  Art  Institute,  rose  in  his  place,  and  in  the 
name  of  the  most  aspiring  of  Chicago's  men  and  women, 
welcomed  the  members  of  the  American  Academy  and  the 
National  Institute  as  representatives  of  American  Art  and 
American  Literature.  Once  again  and  for  the  moment  our 
city  became  a  capital  in  something  like  the  character  of 
Boston  a  generation  before.  This  conception  was  illusory, 
of  course,  but  we  permitted  ourselves  the  illusion  and  ac 
cepted  the  praise  which  our  visitors  showered  upon  us  with 
a  belief  that  we  had  gained,  at  last,  a  recognized  place  in 
the  Nation's  esthetic  history. 

During  the  weeks  of  preparation  for  this  event  I  had  been 
happy  and  content,  but  a  few  days  later,  after  the  clubs 
had  fallen  back  to  their  normal  humdrum  level  I  ac 
knowledged  with  a  sense  of  hopeless  weariness  that  our 
huge  city  had  a  long  way  to  go  before  it  could  equal  the 
small  Boston  of  Emerson,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  Howells. 
My  desire  to  rejoin  my  fellows  in  New  York  was  inten 
sified.  "As  there  is  only  one  London  for  England  so  there 
is  only  one  New  York  for  America." 

All  through  the  autumn  of  1913  I  ground  away  at  my 
story  of  the  Middle  Border,  conscious  of  the  fact  that — 
in  a  commercial  sense — I  was  wasting  my  time,  for  several 
of  my  editorial  friends  had  assured  me  of  that  fact — but 
each  morning  as  I  climbed  to  my  study  I  forgot  my  drab 
surroundings.  Closing  the  door  of  the  bitter  present  and 
turning  my  back  on  the  stormy  future  I  relived  my  auda 
cious  youth  and  dreamed  of  the  brave  days  of  old. 

Thanksgiving  Day  in  West  Salem  was  misty,  dark  and 
still,  but  the  children — bless  their  shining  faces — regarded 
it  as  just  the  right  kind  of  weather  for  our  festival.  They 
were  up  early  and  running  of  errands  for  their  mother  who 
was  chief  cook.  Our  only  guests  were  three  lonely  old 
women,  and  it  gave  me  a  pang  of  pity  for  the  children  who 

374 


Darkness     Just     Before    the     Dawn 

were  forced  thus  to  tolerate  a  group  of  gray-heads  to  whom 
life  was  a  closing,  mournful  dirge.  Happily,  my  daughters 
had  the  flame  of  invincible  youth  in  their  blood  and  danced 
and  sang  as  if  the  world  were  new  and  wholly  beautiful, 
which  it  was,  to  them. 

Dear  little  daughters!  They  didn't  know  that  Daddy 
was  worried  about  his  future  and  theirs,  and  no  sooner 
were  we  back  in  our  Chicago  home  than  they  began  to  look 
away  toward  Christmas.  "Poppie!" — Mary  Isabel  would 
repeat — "only  three  weeks  till — you  know  what  I  Re 
member!" 

I  remembered.  Once  again  their  stockings  were  stuffed 
to  the  hem,  and  their  tree,  a  marvel  of  light,  touched  the 
ceiling  with  its  pliant  tip  on  which  sparkled  a  golden  star. 
To  them  I  was  still  a  wonder-worker.  For  a  week  I  put 
aside  my  dark  musings  and  rejoiced  with  them  in  their 
fairy  world. 

Now  it  chanced  that  the  University  Club  of  Pittsburg 
had  booked  me  for  a  lecture  early  in  January  and  in  taking 
account  of  this,  I  planned  to  invade  Manhattan  once  again, 
in  a  desperate  attempt  to  dispose  of  my  rewritten  Son  of 
the  Middle  Border,  and  to  offer,  also,  one  or  two  short 
stories  which  I  had  lately  put  into  clean  copy.  Humbly, 
sadly,  unwillingly  I  left  my  home  that  cold,  bleak,  dirty 
day,  staggering  under  the  weight  of  my  valises,  for  I  was 
not  in  good  health  and  my  mood  was  irresolute. 

Change  was  in  my  world  and  change  of  an  ominous  kind 
was  in  my  brain.  Subjects  which  once  interested  me  had 
lost  their  savor,  and  several  tales  in  which  I  had  put  my 
best  effort  had  failed  to  meet  my  own  approval  and  had 
been  thrown  aside.  No  mechanic,  no  clerk,  would  have 
envied  me  as  I  boarded  a  filthy  street  car  on  my  way  to  the 
Englewood  station.  That  I  had  reached  a  fork  in  my  trail 
was  all  too  evident.  The  things  for  which  I  had  labored 

375 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle   Border 

all  my  days  were  as  ashes  in  my  hand.  I  walked  with  a 
stoop  and  the  bag  containing  my  manuscript  dragged  at  my 
shoulder  like  a  fifty-pound  weight  as  I  painfully  climbed 
the  steps  leading  to  the  waiting-room  of  the  grimy,  noisy, 
train  station.  I  was  a  million  miles  from  being  a  "distin 
guished  man  of  letters"  at  that  moment,  and  with  a  sense 
of  my  poverty  and  declining  health,  took  a  seat  in  the 
crowded  day  coach  and  rode  all  day  in  gloomy  silence.  At 
noon  I  dined  on  a  sandwich.  Dollars  looked  as  large  as 
dinner  plates  that  day.  "Your  only  way  to  earn  money 
is  to  save  it,"  I  accused  myself. 

At  the  University  Club  in  Pittsburg  I  recovered  slightly. 
The  lecture  having  been  announced  to  take  place  in  the 
dining-room  could  not  be  staged  till  nine  o'clock — a  fact 
which  worried  me  for  I  had  arranged  to  take  the  night 
train  for  the  East — and  this  alarm,  this  fear  of  losing  my 
train  led  me  to  begin  by  address  while  my  audience  was 
assembling,  and  my  hurried  utterance  led  to  weariness  on 
the  part  of  my  hearers.  My  performance  was  a  failure, 
and  to  complete  my  disheartenment  I  reached  the  station 
about  five  minutes  after  the  last  eastern  train  had  pulled 
out. 

Dismayed  by  this  mishap,  I  took  a  seat  in  a  corner  and 
darkly  ruminated.  "What  shall  I  do  now?  Shall  I  go  back 
to  Chicago?  Or  shall  I  go  on?" 

Decision  was  in  reality  taken  out  of  my  hands  by  the 
baggageman  who  said  in  response  to  inquiry,  "I  put  your 
trunk  on  the  8:40  train.  It  is  well  on  its  way  to  New 
York." 

Accepting  this  as  a  mandate  to  go  on,  I  returned  to  my 
room  in  the  University  Club  and  went  to  bed,  but  not  to 
sleep.  For  hours  I  tossed  and  turned  in  self-questioning, 
self-accusing  fury. 

"What  a  fool  you  have  been  to  waste  years  of  labor  on 

376 


Darkness     Just     Before     the     Dawn 

a  book  which  nobody  wants  and  which  has  put  you — tem 
porarily  at  least — out  of  conceit  with  fiction.  Why  go  on? 
Why  spend  more  time  and  money  on  a  vain  attempt  to 
dispose  of  this  manuscript. 

Falling  asleep  at  last,  I  regained  a  part  of  my  courage, 
and  at  breakfast  a  faint  glow  of  hope  crept  into  my  think 
ing.  At  nine  o'clock  I  took  the  day  train  and  in  silence 
rode  for  nearly  twelve  hours,  retracing  the  thirty  years 
which  lay  between  my  first  view  of  Manhattan  and  this 
my  hundredth  reentrance.  With  no  thrill  of  excitement  I 
crossed  the  ferry  and  having  registered  at  a  small  hotel  on 
Thirty-fourth  Street,  went  to  bed  at  nine  o'clock  com 
pletely  worn  out  with  my  journey. 

A  long  night's  sleep  and  a  pot  of  delicious  coffee  for 
breakfast  put  so  much  sunshine  into  my  world  that  I  set 
out  for  Franklin  Square  with  a  gambler's  countenance, 
resolute  to  conceal  my  dismay  from  my  friends  and  espe 
cially  from  my  publisher.  There  was  something  in  the  very 
air  of  Broadway  which  generated  confidence. 

Harpers'  editors  were  genial,  respectful,  but  by  no  means 
enthusiastic  concerning  my  autobiographic  manuscript,  al 
though  I  assurred  Duneka  that  I  had  vastly  improved  it 
since  he  had  read  it  a  year  before. 

"That  may  be,"  he  granted,  "but  it  is  not  fiction  and 
nothing  serializes  but  fiction.  We'll  be  glad  to  schedule  it 
as  a  book,  but  I  don't  see  any  place  for  it  in  our  magazine." 
And  then — more  to  get  rid  of  me  than  for  any  other  reason, 
he  added,  "You  might  see  Collier's.  Mark  Sullivan  is  the 
editor  up  there  now;  it  might  be  that  he  could  use  something 
of  yours." 

Duneka's  indifference  even  more  than  his  shunting  my 
precious  manuscript  into  the  street  brought  back  my  cloud 
of  doubt,  for  it  indicated  a  loss  of  faith  in  me.  To  him 
I  was  a  squeezed  lemon.  Nevertheless  I  took  his  hint. 

377 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle    Border 

Sullivan,  I  knew  and  liked,  and  while  I  had  small  hope 
of  interesting  him  in  The  Middle  Border,  I  did  think  he 
might  buy  one  or  two  of  my  short  stories. 

The  Collier's  plant  humming  with  speed,  prosperous  and 
commercial,  was  not  reassuring  to  me,  but  I  kept  on  through 
the  maze  until  I  reached  Sullivan's  handsome  room,  where 
I  was  given  an  easy  chair  and  told  to  wait,  "the  editor 
will  see  you  in  a  few  minutes." 

Alert,  kindly,  cordial,  Mark  greeted  me  and  taking  a 
seat,  fixed  his  keen  blue,  kindly  eyes  upon  me.  "I'm  glad 
to  see  you,"  he  said,  and  I  believed  he  meant  it.  He  went 
on,  "This  is  the  psychological  moment  for  us  both.  I  am 
looking  for  American  material  and  I  want  something  of 
yours.  What  have  you  to  show  me?" 

Thus  encouraged  I  told  him  of  A  Son  of  the  Middle 
Border. 

He  was  interested.  "Where  is  the  manuscript?  Is  it 
complete?" 

"It  is.    I  have  it  with  me  at  the  hotel." 

"Send  it  down  to  me,"  he  said  quickly,  "I'll  read  it  and 
give  you  a  verdict  at  once." 

In  an  illogical  glow  of  hope  I  hastened  to  fetch  the  manu 
script,  and  in  less  than  two  hours  it  was  in  his  hands. 

I  speak  of  my  hope  as  "illogical"  for  if  the  literary 
monthly  of  my  own  publishers  could  not  find  a  place  for 
it,  how  could  I  reasonably  expect  a  hustling,  bustling  popu 
lar  weekly  like  Collier's  to  use  it? 

Nevertheless  something  in  Sullivan's  voice  and  manner 
restored  my  confidence,  and  when  I  called  on  the  editor 
of  the  Century  I  was  able  to  assume  the  tone  of  successful 
authorship.  The  closer  I  got  to  my  market  the  more  assured 
I  became.  I  counted  for  something  in  New  York.  My 
thirty  years  of  effort  were  remembered  in  my  favor. 

On  Tuesday  Sullivan,  who  had  been  called  to  the  West, 

378 


Darkness     Just     Before     the     Dawn 

wired  me  from  Chicago  that  A  Son  of  the  Middle  Border 
would  make  an  admirable  serial  and  that  his  assistants 
would  take  the  matter  up  with  me.  "I  predict  a  great  suc 
cess  for  it." 

That  night  I  sent  a  message  to  my  wife  in  which  I  exult 
antly  said,  "Rejoice!  I've  sold  The  Middle  Border  to 
Collier's  Weekly.  Our  troubles  are  over  for  a  year  at  least." 

Two  days  later  Collier's  took  a  short  story  at  four  hun 
dred  dollars  and  the  Century  gave  me  three  hundred  for  an 
article  on  James  A.  Herne,  and  when  I  boarded  the  train 
for  Chicago  the  following  week  I  was  not  only  four  thousand 
dollars  better  off  than  when  I  came — I  had  regained  my 
faith  in  the  future.  My  task  was  clearly  outlined.  For  the 
seventh  time  I  set  to  work  revising  A  Son  of  the  Middle 
Border,  preparing  it  for  serial  publication. 

My  father,  who  knew  that  I  had  been  writing  upon  this 
story  for  years,  stared  at  me  in  silent  amazement  when  I 
told  him  of  its  sale.  That  the  editor  of  a  great  periodical 
should  be  interested  in  a  record  of  the  migrations  and  failures 
of  the  McClintocks  and  Garlands  was  incredible.  Never 
theless  he  was  eager  to  see  it  in  print — and  when  in  March 
the  first  instalment  appeared,  he  read  it  with  absorbed  at 
tention  and  mixed  emotions.  " Aren't  you  a  little  hard  on 
me?"  he  asked  with  a  light  in  his  eyes  which  was  half- 
humorous,  half-resentful. 

"I  don't  think  so,  Father,"  I  replied.  "You  must  admit 
you  were  a  stern  disciplinarian  in  those  days." 

"Well  maybe  I  was — but  I  didn't  realize  it." 

My  first  understanding  of  the  depths  this  serial  sounded 
came  to  me  in  the  letters  which  were  written  to  the  editor 
by  those  who  could  not  find  words  in  which  to  express  their 
longing  for  the  bright  world  gone — the  world  when  they 
were  young  and  glad.  "You  have  written  my  life,"  each 

379 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

one  said — and  by  this  they  meant  that  the  facts  of  my  family 
history,  and  my  own  emotional  experiences  were  so  nearly 
theirs  that  my  lines  awoke  an  almost  intolerable  regret  in 
their  hearts — an  ache  which  is  in  my  own  heart  to-day — 
the  world-old  hunger  of  the  gray-haired  man  dwelling  upon 
the  hope  and  illusions  of  youth. 

These  responses  which  indicated  a  wider  and  more  last 
ing  effect  than  I  had  hoped  to  produce,  led  me  to  plan  for 
the  publication  of  the  book  close  on  the  heels  of  the  conclud 
ing  instalment  of  the  serial  but  in  this  I  was  disappointed. 
The  Mexican  war  suddenly  thrust  new  and  tremendously 
exciting  news  articles  into  the  magazine,  separating  and 
delaying  the  printing  of  my  story.  Had  it  not  been  for 
the  loyalty  of  Mark  Sullivan  it  would  have  been  completely 
side-tracked,  but  he  would  not  have  it  so;  on  the  contrary 
he  began  to  talk  with  me  about  printing  six  more  instal 
ments,  and  this  necessarily  put  off  the  question  of  finding 
a  publisher  for  the  book. 

Nevertheless  I  returned  to  my  desk  in  the  expectation 
that  the  Mexican  excitement  was  only  a  flurry  and  that 
the  magazine  would  be  able  to  complete  the  publication 
oi  the  manuscript  within  the  year.  My  harvest  was  not 
destroyed;  it  was  only  delayed. 


380 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-SIX 
A    Spray    of    Wild    Roses 

A  LTHOUGH  for  several  years  my  wife  and  children  had 
•t~\  spent  four  months  of  each  year  in  West  Salem,  and 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  my  father  was  free  to  come 
down  to  visit  us  at  any  time,  I  suffered  a  feeling  of  uneasi 
ness  (almost  of  guilt),  whenever  I  thought  of  him  camping 
alone  for  the  larger  part  of  the  year  in  that  big,  silent  house. 
His  love  for  the  children  and  for  Zulime  made  every  day  of 
his  lonely  life  a  reproach  to  me,  and  yet  there  seemed  no 
way  in  which  I  could  justly  grant  him  more  of  our  time. 
The  welfare  of  my  wife  and  the  education  of  the  children 
must  be  considered. 

He  was  nearing  his  eighty-fourth  birthday,  and  a  realiza 
tion  that  every  week  in  which  he  did  not  see  his  grand 
daughters  was  an  irreparable  loss,  gave  me  uneasiness.  It 
was  a  comfort  to  think  of  him  sitting  in  an  easy  chair  in 
the  blaze  of  a  fireplace  which  he  loved  and  found  a  solace 
and  yet  he  was  a  lonely  old  man — that  could  not  be  denied. 
He  made  no  complaint  in  his  short  infrequent  letters  al 
though  as  spring  came  on  he  once  or  twice  asked,  "Why 
don't  you  come  up?  The  best  place  for  the  children  is 
on  the  lawn  under  the  maples." 

In  one  note  to  me  he  said,  "My  old  legs  are  giving  out. 
I  don't  enjoy  walking  any  more.  I  don't  stand  the  work 
of  the  garden  as  well  as  I  did  last  year.  You'd  better  come 
up  and  help  me  put  in  the  seed." 

381 


A   Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

This  confession  produced  in  me  a  keen  pang.  He  who 
had  marched  so  tirelessly  under  the  lead  of  Grant  and 
Thomas;  he  who  had  fearlessly  cruised  the  pine  forests 
of  Wisconsin,  and  joyously  explored  the  prairies  of  Iowa 
and  Minnesota,  was  now  uncertain  of  his  footing.  Alarmed 
more  than  I  cared  to  confess,  I  hurried  up  to  help  him,  and 
to  tell  him  of  the  success  of  The  Middle  Border,  which  was 
in  truth  as  much  his  story  as  mine. 

The  air  was  thick  with  bird  songs  as  I  walked  up  the 
street,  for  it  was  late  April,  and  I  came  upon  him  at  work 
in  the  garden,  bareheaded  as  usual,  his  white  hair  gleaming 
in  the  sunlight  like  a  silver  crown. 

Outwardly  serene,  without  a  trace  of  bitterness  in  his 
voice,  he  spoke  of  his  growing  weakness.  "Oh,  the  old  ma 
chine  is  wearing  out,  that's  all."  Aware  of  his  decline  he 
accepted  it  as  something  in  the  natural  course  of  human 
life  and  was  content. 

Several  of  his  comrades  had  dropped  away  during  the 
winter  and  he  was  aware  that  all  of  his  generation  were 
nearing  their  end.  "There's  only  one  more  migration  left 
for  us,"  he  said  composedly,  yet  with  a  note  of  regret.  Not 
on  the  strength  of  any  particular  religious  creed  but  by 
reason  of  a  manly  faith  in  the  universe  he  faced  death. 
He  was  a  kind  of  primitive  warrior,  who,  having  lived 
honorably,  was  prepared  to  meet  what  was  to  come.  "I've 
no  complaint  to  make,"  he  said,  "I've  had  a  long  life  and 
on  the  whole  a  happy  life.  I'm  ready  for  the  bugle." 

This  was  the  faith  of  a  pathfinder,  a  philosophy  born  of 
the  open  spaces,  courage  generated  by  the  sun  and  the 
wind.  "I  find  it  hard  to  keep  warm  on  dark  days,"  he  ex 
plained.  "I  guess  my  old  heart  is  getting  tired,"  and  as 
he  spoke  I  thought  of  the  strain  which  that  brave  heart 
had  undergone  in  its  eighty  years  of  action,  on  the  battle 
field,  along  the  river,  in  the  logging  camps,  and  through- 

382 


A    Spray    of    Wild    Roses 

out  all  the  stern,  unceasing  years  of  labor  on  the  farm. 
His  tireless  energy  and  his  indomitable  spirit  came  back, 
filling  my  mind  with  pictures  of  his  swift  and  graceful 
use  of  axe  and  scythe,  and  when  I  spoke  of  the  early  days, 
he  found  it  difficult  to  reply — they  were  so  beautiful  in 
retrospect. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  and  Sunday  afternoon  was 
for  him  a  period  of  musing,  an  hour  of  dream,  and  as  night 
began  to  fall  he  turned  to  me  and  with  familiar  accent  called 
out,  "Come,  Hamlin,  sing  some  of  the  songs  your  mother 
used  to  love,n  and  I  complied,  although  I  could  play  but 
a  crude  accompaniment  to  my  voice.  First  of  all  I  sang 
"Rise  and  Shine"  and  "The  Sweet  Story  of  Old"  in  acknowl 
edgment  of  the  Sabbath,  then  passed  to  "The  Old  Musician 
and  His  Harp,"  ending  with  "When  You  and  I  Were  Young, 
Maggie,"  in  which  I  discerned  a  darker  significance — a 
deeper  pathos  than  ever  before.  It  had  now  a  personal, 
poignant  application. 

Tears  misted  his  eyes  as  I  uttered  the  line,  "But  now 
we  are  aged  and  gray,  Maggie,  the  trials  of  life  are  nearly 
done,"  and  at  the  close  he  was  silent  with  emotion.  He, 
too,  was  aged  and  gray,  his  trials  of  life  nearly  done,  and 
the  one  who  had  been  his  solace  and  his  stay  had  passed 
beyond  recall. 

To  me,  came  the  insistent  thought,  "Soon  he  must  go  to 
join  Mother  in  the  little  plot  under  the  pines  beyond 
Neshonoc."  In  -spite  of  my  philosophy,  I  imagined  their 
reunion  somehow,  somewhere. 

Tender  and  sweet  were  the  scenes  which  the  words  of  my 
songs  evoked — pictures  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
music  except  by  association,  forms  and  faces  of  far-off 
days,  of  Dry  Run  Prairie  and  its  neighbors,  and  of  the 
still  farther  and  dimmer  and  more  magical  experiences 
of  Green's  Coulee,  before  the  call  to  war. 

383 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle    Border 

I  sang  the  song  my  uncle  Bailey  loved.  A  song  which 
took  him  back  to  his  boyhood's  home  in  Maine. 

"The  river's  running  just  the  same, 
The  willows  on  its  side 
Are  larger  than  they  were,  dear  Tom, 
The  stream  appears  less  wide, 
And  stooping  down  to  take  a  drink, 
Dear  Heart,  I  started  so, 
To  see  how  sadly  I  was  changed 
Since  forty  years  ago!" 

His  songs,  his  friends,  his  thoughts  were  all  of  the  past 
except  when  they  dwelt  on  his  grandchildren — and  they, 
after  six  months'  absence,  were  shadowy,  fairy-like  forms 
in  his  memory.  He  found  it  difficult  to  recall  them  pre 
cisely.  He  longed  for  them  but  his  longing  was  for  some 
thing  vaguely  bright  and  cheerful  and  tender.  David  and 
William  and  Susan  and  Belle  were  much  more  vividly  real 
to  him  than  Constance  or  Mary  Isabel. 


On  Monday  morning  he  was  up  early.  "Now  let's  get 
to  work,"  he  said.  "I  can't  hoe  as  I  used  to  do,  and  the 
weeds  are  getting  the  start  of  me."  To  him  the  garden 
was  a  battlefield,  a  contest  with  purslane  and  he  hated 
to  be  worsted. 

"Don't  worry  about  the  garden,"  I  said.  "It  is  not 
very  important.  What  does  it  matter  if  the  'pussley' 
does  cover  the  ground?" 

He  would  not  have  this.  "It  matters  a  good  deal,"  he 
replied  with  hot  resentment,  "and  it  won't  happen  so  long 
as  I  can  stand  up  and  shove  a  hoe." 

To  relieve  his  anxiety  and  to  be  sure  that  he  did  not 
overwork,  I  hired  Uncle  Frank  McClintock  to  come  down 
for  two  or  three  days  a  week  to  help  kill  the  weeds.  "The 

384 


A    Spray    of    Wild    Roses 

crop  is  not  important  to  me,"  I  said  to  him  privately,  "but 
it  is  important  that  you  should  keep  a  close  watch  on 
Father  while  I  am  away.  He  is  getting  feeble  and  forgetful. 
See  him  every  day,  and  wire  me  if  he  is  in  need  of  anything. 
I  must  go  back  to  the  city  for  a  few  weeks.  If  you  need 
me  send  word  and  I'll  come  at  once." 

He  understood,  and  I  went  away  feeling  more  at  ease. 
I  relied  on  Uncle  Frank's  interest  in  him. 

Now,  it  chanced  that  just  before  the  date  of  our  return 
to  the  Homestead,  Lily  Morris,  wife  of  the  newly-appointed 
ambassador  to  Sweden,  invited  my  wife  and  children  to 
accompany  her  on  a  trip  to  the  Big  Horn  Mountains  and 
we  were  all  torn  between  opposing  duties  and  desires. 

Eager  to  see  "Papa's  Mountains,"  yet  loath  to  lose 
anything  of  dear  old  West  Salem,  Mary  Isabel  was  patheti 
cally  perplexed.  Connie  was  all  for  West  Salem  but  Zulime 
who  knew  the  charm  of  the  West  decided  to  go,  and  again 
I  visited  Father  to  tell  him  the  news  and  to  explain  that  we 
would  all  be  with  him  in  August.  The  fear  of  disappoint 
ing  him  was  the  only  cloud  on  the  happy  prospect. 

With  a  feeling  of  guilt  I  met  him  with  the  news  of 
our  change  of  plan,  softening  the  blow  as  best  I  could.  He 
bore  it  composedly,  though  sadly,  while  I  explained  that 
I  could  not  possibly  have  shown  the  children  the  mountains 
of  my  own  accord.  "I  have  some  lectures  in  Colorado,"  I 
explained,  "but  I  shall  not  be  gone  long." 

"I  had  counted  on  seeing  Zulime  and  the  children  next 
week,"  was  all  he  said. 

Just  before  my  return  to  the  city,  he  sent  for  a  team, 
and  together  we  drove  down  to  the  little  Neshonoc  burying 
ground.  "I  want  to  inspect  your  mother's  grave,"  he 
explained. 

On  the  way,  as  we  were  passing  a  clump  of  wild  roses, 
he  asked  me  to  stop  and  cut  some  of  them.  "Your  mother 

385 


A   Daughter    of   the   Middle   Border 

was  fond  of  wild  roses,"  he  said,  "I'd  like  to  put  a  handful 
on  her  grave." 

The  penetrating  odor  of  those  exquisite  blooms  brought 
to  my  mind  vistas  of  the  glorious  sunlit,  odorous  prairies 
of  Iowa,  and  to  gather  and  put  into  his  hand  a  spray  of 
them,  was  like  taking  part  in  a  poem— a  poignant  threnody 
of  age,  for  he  received  them  in  silence,  and  held  them  with 
tender  care,  his  mind  far  away  in  the  past. 

Silently  we  entered  the  gate  of  the  burial  ground,  and 
slowly  approached  the  mound  under  which  my  mother's 
body  rested,  and  as  I  studied  the  thin  form  and  bending 
head  of  my  intrepid  sire,  I  realized  that  he  was  in  very 
truth  treading  the  edge  of  his  own  grave.  My  eyes  grew 
dim  with  tears  and  my  throat  ached  with  a  sense  of  im 
pending  loss,  and  a  pity  for  him  which  I  could  conceal  only 
by  looking  away  at  the  hills. 

Nevertheless,  he  was  calmer  than  I.  "Here  is  where  I 
want  to  lie,"  he  said  quietly  and  stooping,  softly  spread 
his  sprays  of  roses  above  the  mound.  "She  loved  all  the 
prairie  flowers,"  he  said,  "but  she  specially  liked  wild 
roses.  I  always  used  to  bring  them  to  her  from  the  fields. 
We  had  oceans  of  them  in  Dakota  in  those  days." 

It  was  a  commonplace  little  burial  ground  with  a  few 
trees  and  here  and  there  a  bed  of  lilies  or  phlox,  yet  it 
had  charm.  It  was  a  sunny  and  friendly  place,  a  silent  acre 
whose  name  and  history  went  back  to  the  beginning  of 
the  first  white  settlement  in  the  valley.  On  its  monuments 
were  chiseled  the  familiar  names  of  pioneers,  and  it  was 
characteristic  of  the  time  and  deeply  characteristic  of  the 
McClintocks,  to  be  told,  by  my  father,  that  in  some  way  the 
exact  location  of  my  grandmother's  grave  had  been  lost 
and  that  no  stone  marked  the  spot  where  my  grandfather 
was  buried. 

We  wandered  around  among  the  graves  for  half  an  hour 

386 


A    Spray    of    Wild    Roses 

while  Father  spoke  of  the  men  and  women  whose  names 
were  on  the  low  and  leaning  stones.  "They  were  American," 
he  said.  "These  German  neighbors  of  ours  are  all  right 
in  their  way,  but  it  isn't  our  way.  They  are  good  citizens 
as  far  as  they  know  how  to  be,  but  they  don't  think  in  our 
words.  Soon  there  won't  be  any  of  the  old  families  left. 
My  world  is  just  about  gone,  and  so  I  don't  mind  going  my 
self,  only  I  want  to  go  quick.  I  don't  want  to  be  bed 
ridden  for  months  as  Vance  McKinley  was.  If  I  could 
have  my  wish,  I'd  go  out  like  a  candle  in  a  puff  of  wind, — 
and  I  believe  that's  the  way  I  shall  go." 

It  was  a  radiant  June  afternoon  and  as  we  drove  back 
along  the  familiar  lane  toward  the  hills  softened  by  the 
mist,  we  looked  away  over  a  valley  throbbing  with  life  and 
rich  with  the  shining  abundance  of  growing  grain — a  rich 
and  peaceful  and  lovely  valley  to  me — but  how  much  more 
it  all  meant  to  my  father!  Every  hill  had  its  memories, 
every  turn  in  the  road  opened  a  vista  into  the  past.  The 
mill,  the  covered  bridge,  the  lonely  pine  by  the  river's 
bank, — all,  all  spoke  to  him  of  those  he  had  loved  and  lost. 

With  guilty  reluctance  I  confessed  that  the  return  of  the 
children  had  again  been  postponed.  "Mrs.  Morris  cannot 
tell  just  when  she  will  return — I  fear  not  before  the  first  of 
September.  It  is  a  wonderful  opportunity  for  the  children 
to  see  the  mountains.  I  could  not  afford  to  take  them  on 
such  a  trip — much  as  I  should  like  to  do  so — and  there  is 
no  telling  when  such  another  opportunity  will  offer.  Mary 
Isabel  is  just  at  the  right  age  to  remember  all  she  sees 
and  a  summer  in  the  mountains  will  mean  much  to  her  in 
after  life.  Even  Constance  will  be  profoundly  changed  by 
it.  Zulime  is  sorry  to  disappoint  you  but  she  feels  that 
it  would  be  wrong  to  refuse  such  an  opportunity." 

He  made  no  complaint,  offered  no  further  opposition,  he 
only  said  gently  and  sadly,  "Don't  let  them  stay  away 

387 


A   Daughter   of   the    Middle    Border 

too  long.  I  want  them  here  part  of  the  summer.  I  miss 
them  terribly — and  you  must  remember  my  time  on  earth 
is  nearly  ended." 

"We  shall  all  be  here  in  August,"  I  assured  him,  "and  I 
may  return  late  in  July." 

This  was  the  twelfth  of  June  and  as  I  left  the  house  for 
the  train  the  picture  of  that  lonely,  white-haired  man, 
sitting  at  the  window,  took  away  all  the  anticipation  of 
pleasure  with  which  our  expedition  had  filled  my  mind.  I 
was  minded  to  decline  the  wondrous  opportunity  and  send 
the  children  to  the  old  Homestead  and  their  grandsire. 


388 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-SEVEN" 
A  Soldier  of  the  Union  Mustered  Out 

ON  my  return  to  Chicago,  I  made  good  report  of  Father's 
condition  and  said  nothing  of  his  forebodings,  for  I 
wanted  Zulime  to  start  on  her  vacation  in  entire  freedom 
from  care.  Had  it  not  been  for  my  lecture  engagements  I 
might  not  have  gone  with  them,  but  as  certain  dates  were 
fixed,  I  bought  tickets  for  myself  on  the  same  train  which 
Mrs.  Morris  had  taken,  and  announced  my  intention  to 
travel  with  the  party  at  least  as  far  as  Sheridan.  "I  want 
to  watch  the  children's  faces  and  hear  their  words  of  delight 
when  they  see  the  mountains,"  I  explained  to  Mrs.  Morris. 
"My  lectures  at  the  Colorado  Normal  School  do  not  begin 
till  the  second  week  in  July — so  that  I  can  be  with  you 
part  of  the  time." 

My  decision  gave  the  final  touch  to  the  children's 
happiness.  They  liked  their  shaggy  father — I  don't  know 
why,  but  they  did — and  during  the  days  of  preparation 
their  voices  were  filled  with  bird-like  music.  They  were 
palpitant  with  joy. 

On  the  day  appointed  the  Morris  automobile  called  for 
us  and  took  us  to  the  train,  and  when  the  children  found  that 
they  were  to  travel  in  a  private  pullman  and  that  the  state 
room  was  to  be  their  own  little  house  they  were  transported 
with  pride.  Thereafter  they  knew  nothing  of  heat  or  dust 
or  weariness.  Their  meals  came  regularly,  and  they  went 
to  bed  in  their  berths  with  warbles  of  satisfaction. 

389 


A    Daughter    of   the    Middle    Border 

The  plains  of  the  second  day's  travel  absorbed  them. 
The  prairie  dogs,  the  herds  of  cattle,  the  cactus  blooms  all 
came  in  for  joyous  recognition.  They  had  read  about  them: 
now  here  they  were  in  actuality.  "Are  those  the  moun 
tains?"  asked  Mary  Isabel  as  we  came  in  sight  of  the 
buttes  of  Eastern  Wyoming.  "No,  only  hills,"  I  replied. 

Then,  at  last,  came  the  Big  Horns  deep  blue  and  lined 
with  snow.  Mary  Isabel's  eyes  expanded  with  awe.  "Oh, 
they  are  so  much  finer  than  I  expected  them  to  be,"  she  said, 
and  from  that  moment,  she  gave  them  her  adoration.  They 
were  papa's  mountains  and  hence  not  to  be  feared.  "Are 
we  really  going  up  there?"  she  asked.  "Yes,"  I  replied 
pointing  out  Cloud  Peak,  "we  shall  go  up  almost  directly 
toward  that  highest  mountain  of  all." 

At  a  camp  just  above  Big  Horn  City  we  spent  a  month 
of  just  the  sort  of  riding,  trailing  and  camping  which  I  was 
eager  to  have  my  children  know,  and  in  a  few  days  under 
my  instruction,  they  both  learned  to  sit  a  horse  in  fearless 
confidence.  Mary  Isabel,  who  was  eleven,  accompanied 
me  on  a  ride  to  Cloud  Peak  Lake,  a  matter  of  twenty  miles 
over  a  rough  trail,  and  came  into  camp  almost  unwearied. 
She  was  a  chip  of  the  old  block  in  this  regard,  and  as  I 
listened  to  her  cheery  voice  and  looked  down  into  her  shin 
ing  face  I  was  a  picture  of  shameless  parental  pride.  For 
several  weeks  I  was  able  to  remain  with  them  and  then  at 
last  set  forth  for  Colorado  on  my  lecture  tour. 

Meanwhile,  unsuspected  by  Americans,  colossal  armies 
were  secretly  mobilizing  in  Europe,  and  on  August  first, 
whilst  we  were  on  our  way  home,  the  sound  of  cannon  pro 
claimed  to  the  world  the  end  of  one  era  and  the  beginning  of 
another.  Germany  announced  to  the  rulers  of  the  Eastern 
Hemisphere  that  she  intended  to  dominate  not  merely  the 
land  but  the  seas,  and  in  my  quiet  hotel  in  a  Colorado  col 
lege  town  this  proclamation  found  amazed  readers.  I,  for 


A  Soldier  of  the  Union  Mustered  Out 

one,  could  not  believe  it — even  after  my  return  to  Chicago 
in  August,  while  the  papers  were  shouting  "War!  War!"  I 
remained  unconvinced.  Germany's  program  seemed  mon 
strous,  impossible. 

The  children  and  their  mother  arrived  two  days  later 
and  to  Zulime  I  said  "Father  is  patiently  waiting  for  us  and 
in  the  present  state  of  things  West  Salem  seems  a  haven 
of  rest.  We  must  go  to  him  at  once."  She  was  willing 
and  on  August  six,  two  days  after  England  declared  war, 
the  old  soldier  met  us,  looking  thin  and  v/hite  but  so  happy 
in  our  coming  that  his  health  seemed  miraculously  restored. 
With  joyous  outcry  the  children  sprang  to  his  embrace 
and  Zulime  kissed  him  with  such  sincerity  of  regard  that 
he  gave  her  a  convulsive  hug.  "Oh,  but  I'm  glad  to  see 
you!"  he  exclaimed  while  tears  of  joy  glistened  on  his 
cheeks. 

"Well,  Father,  what  do  you  think  about  the  European 
situation?"  I  asked. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  think,"  he  gravely  answered.  "It 
starts  in  like  a  big  war,  the  biggest  the  world  has  ever 
seen.  If  you  can  believe  what  the  papers  say,  the  Germans 
have  decided  to  eat  up  France." 

Although  physically  weaker,  he  was  mentally  alert  and 
read  his  Tribune  with  a  kind  of  religious  zeal.  The  vast- 
ness  of  the  German  armies,  the  enormous  weight  and  power 
of  their  cannons,  and  especially  the  tremendous  problem 
of  their  commissariat  staggered  his  imagination.  "I  don't 
see  how  they  are  going  to  maintain  all  those  troops,"  he 
repeated.  "How  can  they  shelter  and  clothe  and  feed  three 
million  men?" 

To  him,  one  of  Sherman's  soldiers,  who  had  lived  for  days 
on  parched  corn  stolen  from  the  feedboxes  of  the  mules, 
the  description  of  wheeled  ovens,  and  hot  soup  wagons 
appeared  mere  fiction.  Although  appalled  by  the  rush  of 

391 


A    Daughter   of    the    Middle    Border 

the  Prussian  line,  he  was  confident  that  the  Allies  would 
check  the  invasion.  Sharply  resenting  the  half- veiled  pro- 
Germanism  of  some  of  his  neighbors,  he  declared  hotly: 
"They  claim  to  be  loyal  to  America,  but  they  are  hoping 
the  Kaiser  will  win.  I  will  not  trade  with  such  men." 

How  far  away  it  all  seemed  on  those  lovely  nights  when 
with  my  daughters  beside  me  I  lay  on  their  broad  bed  out 
on  the  upper  porch  and  heard  the  crickets  sleepily  chirping 
and  the  wind  playing  with  the  leaves  in  the  maples.  To 
Connie's  sensitive  ears  the  rustle  suggested  stealthy  feet 
and  passing  wings — but  to  me  came  visions  of  endless  rivers 
of  helmeted  soldiers  flowing  steadily  remorselessly  through 
Belgium,  and  Mary  Isabel  said,  "Papa,  don't  you  think  of 
going  to  war.  I  won't  let  you." 

"They  wouldn't  take  me  anyway,"  I  replied,  "I'm  too 
old.  You  needn't  worry." 

I  could  not  conceal  from  myself  the  fact  that  my  father's 
work  was  almost  done.  That  he  was  failing  was  sorrow 
fully  evident.  He  weeded  the  garden  no  more.  Content  to 
sit  in  a  chair  on  the  back  porch  or  to  lie  in  a  hammock 
under  the  maples,  he  spent  long  hours  with  me  or  with 
Zulime,  recalling  the  battles  of  the  Civil  War,  or  relating 
incidents  of  the  early  history  of  the  valley. 

He  still  went  to  his  club  each  night  after  supper,  but  the 
walk  was  getting  to  be  more  and  more  of  a  task,  and  he 
rejoiced  when  we  found  time  to  organize  a  game  of  cinch 
at  home.  This  we  very  often  did,  and  sometimes,  even  in 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon  I  called  him  in  to  play  with 
me;  for  with  a  great  deal  of  time  on  his  hands  he  was  rest 
less.  "I  can't  read  all  the  time,"  he  said,  "and  most  of  the 
fellows  are  busy  during  the  middle  of  the  day." 

Each  morning  regular  as  the  clock  he  went  to  the  post- 
office  to  get  his  paper,  and  at  lunch  he  was  ready  to  discuss 
the  news  of  the  battles  which  had  taken  place.  After  his 

392 


A  Soldier  of  the  Union  Mustered  Out 

meal  he  went  for  a  little  work  in  the  garden,  for  his  hatred 
of  weeds  was  bitter.  He  could  not  endure  to  have  them 
overrun  his  crops.  They  were  his  Huns,  his  menacing 
invaders. 

In  this  fashion  he  approached  his  eighty-fourth  birthday. 
His  manner  was  tranquil,  but  I  knew  that  he  was  a  little 
troubled  by  some  outstanding  notes  which  he  had  signed  in 
order  to  purchase  a  house  for  my  brother  in  Oklahoma,  and 
to  cure  this  I  bought  up  these  papers,  canceled  them  and 
put  them  under  his  breakfast  plate.  "I  want  him  to  start 
his  eighty-fifth  year  absolutely  clear  of  debt,"  I  said  to 
Zulime. 

He  was  much  affected  by  the  discovery  of  these  papers. 
It  pleased  him  to  think  that  I  had  the  money  to  spare. 
It  was  another  evidence  of  my  prosperity. 

Nearly  half  of  A  Son  of  the  Middle  Border  had  now 
been  printed  and  while  he  had  read  it  he  was  shy  about  dis 
cussing  it.  Something  almost  sacred  colored  the  pictures 
which  my  story  called  up.  Its  songs  and  sayings  vibrated 
deep,  searching  the  foundation  chords  of  his  life.  They 
told  of  a  bright  world  vanished,  a  landscape  so  beautiful 
that  it  hurt  to  have  some  parts  of  it  revealed  to  aliens — 
and  yet  he  was  glad  of  it  and  talked  of  it  to  his  comrades. 

Zulime  made  a  birthday  cake  for  him  and  the  children 
decorated  it,  and  when  Mary  Isabel  brought  it  in  with  all 
its  candles  lighted,  and  we  lifted  our  triumphant  song,  he 
was  overwhelmed  with  happiness  and  pride. 

"I  never  had  a  birthday  cake  or  a  birthday  celebration 
before  in  all  my  life,"  he  said,  and  we  hardly  knew  whether 
to  laugh  or  to  cry  at  that  confession. 

We  ended  the  day  by  singing  for  him — that  was  the 
best  of  it  all;  for  both  the  children  could  now  join  with 
me  in  voicing  the  tunes  which  he  loved.  They  knew  his 
enthusiasms  and  were  already  faithful  heirs  of  his  tra- 

393 


A   Daughter   of   the   Middle   Border 

ditions.     Singers  of  the  future,  they  loved  to  hear  him 
recount  the  past. 

All  through  the  month  of  September  as  we  walked  our 
peaceful  way  in  Wisconsin  the  Germans  were  pounding  at 
the  gates  of  Paris.  It  comforts  me  at  this  moment  to 
recall  how  peaceful  my  father  was.  He  heard  of  the  war 
only  as  of  a  far-off  storm.  He  had  us  all,  all  but  Franklin, 
and  there  was  no  bitterness  in  his  voice  as  he  spoke  of  his 
increasing  uselessness.  "I'm  only  a  passenger  now,"  he 
said.  "I've  finished  my  work." 

As  the  Interstate  Fair  came  on,  he  quietly  engaged  a 
neighbor  to  take  us  all  down  to  La  Crosse  in  an  automobile. 
"This  is  my  treat,"  he  said,  and  knowing  how  much  it 
meant  to  him  I  gladly  accepted.  With  a  fine  sense  of  being 
up-to-date  he  reverted  to  the  early  days  as  we  went  whirling 
down  the  turnpike,  and  told  tales  of  hauling  hay  and  grain 
over  these  long  hills.  He  pointed  out  the  trail  and  spoke 
of  its  mud  and  sand.  "It  took  us  six  hours  then.  Now,  see, 
it's  just  like  a  city  street." 

He  was  greatly  pleased  to  find  an  aeroplane  flying  above 
the  grounds  as  we  drew  near.  "They  say  the  Germans  are 
making  use  of  these  machines  for  scouting — and  they  are 
building  others  to  fight  with.  I  can't  understand  how  they 
make  a  ton  of  iron  fly." 

Once  inside  the  gates  we  let  him  play  the  host.  He  bought 
candy  for  the  children,  paid  for  our  dinners  at  the  restaurant 
and  took  us  to  the  side-shows.  It  wearied  him,  however, 
and  about  three  o'clock  he  said  "Let's  go  home  by  way  of 
Onalaska.  I  want  to  visit  the  cemetery  and  see  if  Father's 
lot  is  properly  cared  for."  It  seemed  a  rather  melancholy 
finish  to  our  day,  but  I  agreed  and  as  we  were  crossing  the 
sandy  stretch  of  road  over  which  I  limped  as  a  child,  I 
remarked  "How  short  the  distance  seems."  He  smiled  like 
a  conqueror,  "This  is  next  thing  to  flying,"  he  said. 

.394 


A  Soldier  of  the  Union  Mustered  Out 

This  lonely  little  burial  ground,  hardly  more  impressive 
than  the  one  at  Neshonoc,  contained  the  graves  of  all  the 
Garlands  who  had  lived  in  that  region.  "There  is  a  place 
here  for  me,"  he  said,  "but  I  want  you  to  put  me  in  Neshonoc 
beside  your  mother." 

On  the  way  home  he  recovered  his  cheerfulness  with  an 
almost  boyish  resiliency.  The  flight  of  the  car  up  the  long 
hill  which  used  to  be  such  a  terror  to  his  sweating  team, 
gave  a  satisfaction  which  broke  out  in  speech.  "It  beats 
all  how  a  motor  can  spin  right  along  up  a  grade  like  this — 
and  the  flies  can't  sting  it  either,"  he  added  in  remembering 
the  tortured  cattle  of  the  past.  When  I  told  him  of  an 
invitation  to  attend  a  "Home  Coming  of  Iowa  Authors" 
which  I  was  considering,  he  expressed  his  pleasure  and 
urged  me  to  accept.  Des  Moines  was  a  real  city  to  him.  It 
possessed  the  glamour  of  a  capital  and  to  have  me  claimed 
by  the  State  of  Iowa  pleased  him  more  than  any  recogni 
tion  in  New  York. 

The  following  day  he  watched  while  the  carpenter  and 
I  worked  at  putting  my  study  into  shape.  Ever  since  the 
fire  two  years  before  its  ceiling  had  needed  repair,  and 
even  now  I  was  but  half-hearted  in  its  restoration.  As 
I  looked  around  the  square,  bare,  ugly  room  and  thought 
of  the  spacious  libraries  of  Longfellow,  Lowell  and  Holmes, 
I  realized  my  almost  hopeless  situation.  I  was  only  a  lit 
erary  camper  after  all.  My  life  was  not  here — it  couldn't 
be  here  so  far  from  all  that  makes  a  writer's  life  worth 
while.  "Soon  for  the  sake  of  the  children  I  must  take  them 
from  this  pleasant  rut,"  I  said  to  Zulime.  "It  is  true  an 
author  can  make  himself  felt  from  any  place,  but  why  do 
it  at  a  disadvantage?  If  it  were  not  for  Father,  I  would 
establish  our  winter  home  in  New  York,  which  has  the 
effect  of  increasing  my  power  as  well  as  my  happiness." 
*On  the  twentieth  of  October  Father  called  me  to  his 

395 


A  Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

room.  "I'm  getting  near  the  end  of  my  trail,"  he  said, 
"and  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  my  will.  I  want  you  two 
boys  to  share  equally  in  all  I've  got  and  I'd  like  to  have  you 
keep  this  property  just  as  it  is,  then  you'll  be  safe,  you'll 
always  have  a  home.  I'm  ready  to  go — any  time,  only  I 
don't  like  to  leave  the  children — "  His  voice  failed  him 
for  a  moment,  then  he  added,  "I  know  I  can't  last  long." 

Though  refusing  to  take  a  serious  view  of  his  premoni 
tion  I  realized  that  his  hold  on  life  was  loosening  and  I 
answered,  "Your  wishes  shall  be  carried  out." 

He  did  not  feel  like  going  up  to  the  club  that  night,  and 
so  we  played  cards  with  him.  Wilson  Irvine,  a  landscape 
painter,  who  was  visiting  us  chose  Constance  as  a  partner 
against  Mary  Isabel  and  her  grandsire.  Luck  was  all  in 
Constance's  favor,  she  and  Irvine  won,  much  to  the  veteran's 
chagrin.  "You  little  witch,"  he  said,  "what  do  you  mean 
by  beating  your  granddad?"  He  was  very  proud  of  her 
skill,  for  she  was  only  six  years  old. 

To  end  the  evening  to  his  liking,  we  all  united  in  singing 
some  old  war  songs  and  he  went  away  to  his  bed  in  better 
spirits  than  he  had  shown  for  a  week  or  more. 

He  was  at  the  breakfast  table  with  me  next  morning,  but 
seemed  not  quite  awake.  He  replied  when  I  spoke  to  him, 
but  not  alertly,  not  as  he  should,  and  a  few  minutes  later 
rose  with  effort.  This  disturbed  me  a  little,  but  a  few 
minutes  later  he  left  the  house  as  if  to  do  some  work  at 
the  barn,  and  I  went  to  my  writing  with  a  feeling  that  he 
was  quite  all  right. 

It  was  a  glorious  October  morning  and  from  my  desk  as 
I  looked  into  the  yard  I  could  see  him  standing  in  the  gate, 
waiting  for  the  man  and  team.  He  appeared  perfectly 
well  and  exhibited  his  customary  impatience  with  dilatory 
workmen.  He  was  standing  alertly  erect  with  the  sunshine 

396 


A  Soldier  of  the  Union  Mustered  Out 

falling  over  him  and  the  poise  of  his  head  expressed  his 
characteristic  energy.  He  made  a  handsome  figure.  My 
eyes  fell  again  to  my  manuscript  and  I  was  deep  in  my 
imaginary  world  when  I  heard  the  voice  of  my  uncle  Frank 
calling  to  me  up  the  stairs: 

"Hamlin!  Come  quick.  Something  has  happened.  Come, 
quick,  quick!" 

There  was  a  note  in  his  voice  which  sent  a  chill  through 
my  blood,  and  my  first  glance  into  his  eyes  told  me  that 
he  had  looked  upon  the  elemental.  "Your  father  is  lying  out 
on  the  floor  of  the  barn.  I'm  afraid  he's  gone!" 

He  was  right.  There  on  the  rough  planking  of  the  car 
riage  way  lay  the  old  pioneer,  motionless,  just  as  he  had 
fallen  not  five  minutes  before.  The  hat  upon  his  head  and 
his  right  hand  in  his  pocket  told  that  he  had  fallen  while 
standing  in  the  door  waiting  for  the  drayman.  His  eyes 
were  closed  as  if  in  sleep,  and  no  sign  of  injury  could  be 
seen. 

Kneeling  by  his  side  I  laid  my  hand  on  his  breast.  It  was 
still!  His  heart  invincible  through  so  many  years  had  ceased 
to  beat.  His  breath  was  gone  and  his  empty  left  hand, 
gracefully  lax,  lay  at  his  side.  The  veteran  pioneer  had 
passed  to  that  farther  West  from  whose  vague  savanahs 
no  adventurer  has  ever  returned. 

"He  must  have  died  on  his  feet,"  said  my  uncle  gravely, 
tenderly. 

"Yes,  he  went  the  way  he  wished  to  go,"  I  replied  with 
a  painful  stress  in  my  throat. 

Together  we  took  him  up  and  bore  him  to  the  house, 
and  placed  him  on  the  couch  whereon  he  had  been  wont 
to  rest  during  the  day. 

I  moved  like  a  man  in  a  dream.  It  was  all  incredible, 
benumbing.  Tenderly  I  disposed  his  head  on  its  pillow  and 

397 


A   Daughter   of  the  Middle   Border 

drew  his  hands  across  his  breast.  "Here  is  the  end  of  a 
good  man,"  I  said.  " Another  soldier  of  the  Union  mus 
tered  out." 

His  hands,  strong,  yet  singularly  refined,  appealed  to  me 
with  poignant  suggestion.  What  stern  tasks  they  had 
accomplished.  What  brave  deeds  they  had  dared.  In  spite 
of  the  hazards  of  battle,  notwithstanding  the  perils  of  the 
forests,  the  raft,  the  river,  after  all  the  hardships  of  the 
farm,  they  remained  unscarred  and  shapely.  The  evidence 
of  good  blood  was  in  their  slender  whiteness.  Honorable, 
skilfull,  indefatigable  hands, — now  forever  at  rest. 

My  uncle  slipped  away  to  notify  the  coroner,  leaving  me 
there,  alone,  with  the  still  and  silent  form,  which  had  been 
a  dominant  figure  in  my  world.  For  more  than  half  a 
century  those  gray  eyes  and  stern  lips  had  influenced  my 
daily  life.  In  spite  of  my  growing  authority,  in  spite  of 
his  age  he  had  been  a  force  to  reckon  with  up  to  the  very 
moment  of  his  death.  He  was  not  a  person  to  be  ignored. 
All  his  mistakes,  his  weaknesses,  faded  from  my  mind,  I 
remembered  only  his  heroic  side.  His  dignity,  his  manly 
grace  were  never  more  apparent  than  now  as  he  lay  quietly, 
as  though  taking  his  midday  rest. 

A  breath  of  pathos  rose  from  the  open  book  upon  his 
table.  His  hat,  his  shoes,  his  gloves  all  spoke  of  his  un 
conquerable  energy.  I  thought  of  the  many  impatient  words 
I  had  spoken  to  him,  and  they  would  have  filled  me  with  a 
wave  of  remorse  had  I  not  known  that  our  last  day  together 
had  been  one  of  perfect  understanding.  His  final  night 
with  us  had  been  entirely  happy,  and  he  had  gone  away 
as  he  had  wished  to  go,  in  the  manner  of  a  warrior  killed 
in  action.  His  unbending  soul  had  kept  his  body  upright 
to  the  end. 

All  that  day  I  went  about  the  house  with  my  children 
like  one  whose  world  had  suddenly  begun  to  crumble.  The 

398  " 


A  Soldier  of  the  Union  Mustered  Out 

head  of  my  house  was  gone.  Over  and  over  again  I  stole 
softly  into  his  room  unable  to  think  of  him  as  utterly  cold 
and  still. 

For  seventy  years  he  had  faced  the  open  lands.  Starting 
from  the  hills  of  Maine  when  a  lad,  he  had  kept  moving, 
each  time  farther  west,  farther  from  his  native  valley.  His 
life,  measured  by  the  inventions  he  had  witnessed,  the  prog 
ress  he  had  shared,  covered  an  enormous  span. 

"He  died  like  a  soldier,"  I  said  to  the  awed  children,  "and 
he  shall  have  the  funeral  of  a  soldier.  We  will  not  mourn, 
and  we  will  not  whisper  or  walk  tip-toe  in  the  presence  of 
his  body." 

In  this  spirit  we  called  his  friends  together.  In  place  of 
flowers  we  covered  his  coffin  with  the  folds  of  a  flag,  and 
when  his  few  remaining  comrades  came  to  take  a  last  look 
at  him,  my  wife  and  I  greeted  them  cordially  in  ordinary 
voice  as  if  they  had  come  to  spend  an  evening  with  him 
and  with  us. 

My  final  look  at  him  in  the  casket  filled  my  mind  with 
love  and  admiration.  His  snowy  hair  and  beard,  his  fair 
skin  and  shapely  features,  as  well  as  a  certain  firm  sweetness 
in  the  line  of  his  lips  raised  him  to  a  grave  dignity  which 
made  me  proud  of  him.  Representing  an  era  in  American 
settlement  as  he  did  I  rejoiced  that  nothing  but  the  noblest 
lines  of  his  epic  career  were  written  on  his  face. 

This  is  my  consolation.  His  last  days  were  spent  in  calm 
content  with  his  granddaughters  to  delight  and  comfort 
him.  In  their  young  lives  his  spirit  is  going  forward.  They 
remember  and  love  Mm  as  the  serene,  white-haired  veteran 
of  many  battles  who  taught  them  to  revere  the  banner  he 
so  passionately  adored. 


399 


The  art  career  which  Zulime  Taft  abandoned  (against  my  wish) 
after  our  marriage,  is  now  being  taken  up  by  her  daughter  Con 
stance  who,  at  fourteen,  signs  herself  C.  Hamlin  Garland,  Artist. 


AFTERWORD 


To  Mary  Isabel,  who,  as  a  girl  of  eighteen,  still  loves  to  impersonate 


Afterword 

AT  this  point  I  make  an  end  of  this  chronicle,  the  story 
of  two  families  whose  wanderings  and  vicissitudes  (as 
I  conceive  them)  are  typical  of  thousands  of  other  families 
who  took  part  in  the  upbuilding  of  the  Middle  Western 
States  during  that  period  which  lies  between  the  close  of 
the  Civil  War  and  the  Great  War  of  Nineteen  Fourteen. 
With  the  ending  of  the  two  principal  life-lines  which  bind 
these  pages  together  rny  book  naturally  closes. 

In  these  two  volumes  over  which  I  have  brooded  for 
more  than  ten  years,  I  have  shadowed  forth,  imperfectly, 
yet  with  high  intent,  the  experiences  of  Isabel  McClintock 
and  Richard  Garland,  and  the  lives  of  other  settlers  closely 
connected  with  them.  For  a  full  understanding  of  the 
drama — for  it  is  a  drama,  a  colossal  and  colorful  drama — 
I  must  depend  upon  the  memory  or  the  imagination  of  my 
readers.  No  writer  can  record  it  all  or  even  suggest  the 
major  part  of  it.  At  the  end  of  four  years  of  writing  I 
go  to  press  with  reluctance,  but  realizing  that  my  public, 
like  myself,  is  growing  gray,  I  have  consented  to  publish 
my  manuscript  with  its  many  imperfections  and  omissions. 

My  Neshonoc  is  gone.  The  community  which  seemed  so 
stable  to  me  thirty  years  ago,  has  vanished  like  a  wisp  of 
sunrise  fog.  The  McClintocks,  the  Dudleys,  the  Baileys, 
pioneers  of  my  father's  generation,  have  entered  upon  their 
final  migration  to  another  darkly  mysterious  frontier.  My 
sunset  World — all  of  it — is  in  process  of  change,  of  disin 
tegration,  of  dissolution.  My  beloved  trails  are  grass- 
grown.  I  have  put  away  my  saddle  and  my  tent-cloth, 

403 


Afterword 

realizing  that  at  sixty-one  my  explorations  of  the  wilder 
ness  are  at  an  end.  Like  a  captive  wolf  I  walk  a  narrow 
round  in  a  city  square. 

With  my  father's  death  I  ceased  to  regard  the  La  Crosse 
Valley  even  as  my  summer  home.  I  decided  to  make  my 
permanent  residence  in  the  East,  and  my  wife  and  daughters 
whose  affections  were  so  deeply  inwound  with  the  Midland, 
loyally  consented  to  follow,  although  it  was  a  sad  surrender 
for  them.  As  my  mother,  Isabel  McClintock,  had  given 
up  her  home  and  friends  in  the  Valley  to  follow  Richard 
Garland  into  the  new  lands  of  the  West,  so  now  Zulime 
Taft,  A  Daughter  of  the  Middle  Border,  surrendered  all  she 
had  gained  in  Illinois  and  Wisconsin  to  follow  me  into  the 
crowded  and  dangerous  East.  It  was  a  tearing  wrench,  but 
she  did  it.  She  sold  our  house  in  Woodlawn,  packed  up  our 
belongings  and  joined  me  in  a  small  apartment  seven  stories 
above  the  pavement  in  the  heart  of  Manhattan. 

The  children  came  East  with  a  high  sense  of  adventure, 
with  no  realization  that  they  were  leaving  their  childhood's 
home  never  to  return  to  it.  They  still  talk  of  going  back 
to  West  Salem,  and  they  have  named  our  summer  cabin  in 
the  Catskills  "Neshonoc"  in  memory  of  the  little  pioneer 
village  whose  graveyard  holds  all  that  is  material  of  their 
paternal  grandparents.  The  colors  of  the  old  Homestead 
are  growing  dim,  and  yet  they  will  not  permit  me  to  deed 
it  to  others.  We  still  own  it  and  shall  continue  to  do  so. 
It  has  too  many  memories  both  sweet  and  sacred, — it 
seems  that  by  clinging  to  its  material  forms  we  may  still 
retain  its  soul. 

We  think  of  it  often,  and  when  around  our  rude  fireplace 
in  Camp  Neshonoc  in  a  room  almost  as  rough  as  a  frontier 
cabin,  we  sit  and  sing  the  songs  which  are  at  once  a  tribute 
to  our  forebears  and  a  bond  of  union  with  the  past,  the 
shadows  of  the  heroic  past  emerge.  David  and  Luke, 

404 


A   Daughter   of  the    Middle   Border 

Richard  and  Walter,  and  with  them  Susan  and  Lorette — all 
— all  the  ones  I  loved  and  honored . 

My  daughters  are  true  granddaughters  of  the  Middle 
Border.  Constance  at  fourteen,  Mary  Isabel  at  eighteen, 
are  carrying  forward,  each  in  her  distinctive  way,  the  tradi 
tions  of  the  Border,  with  the  sturdy  spirit  of  their  forebears 
in  the  West.  To  them  I  am  about  to  entrust  the  work 
which  I  have  only  partially  completed. 

Too  young  at  first  to  understand  the  reasons  for  my 
decision,  they  are  now  in  agreement  with  me  that  we  can 
never  again  live  in  the  Homestead.  They  love  every  tree, 
every  shrub  on  the  old  place.  The  towering  elms,  the 
crow's  nest  in  the  maples,  the  wall  of  growing  woodbine, 
the  gaunt,  wide-spreading  butternut  branches, — all  these 
are  very  dear  to  them,  for  they  are  involved  with  their 
earliest  memories,  touched  with  the  glamour  which  the 
imagination  of  youth  flings  over  the  humblest  scenes  of 
human  life.  To  them  the  Fern  Road,  The  Bubbling  Spring, 
and  the  Apple  Tree  Glen,  scenes  of  many  camping  places, 
are  all  a  part  of  childhood's  fairy  kingdom.  The  thought  of 
never  again  walking  beneath  those  familiar  trees  or  sitting 
in  those  familiar  rooms,  is  painful  to  them,  and  yet  I  am 
certain  that  their  Neshonoc,  like  my  own,  is  a  realm  remem 
bered,  a  region  to  which  they  can  return  only  on  the  wings 
of  memory  or  of  dream. 

Happily  the  allurement  of  art,  the  stimulus  of  ambition 
and  the  promise  of  love  and  honor  already  partly  compen 
sate  them  for  their  losses.  Their  faces  are  set  to  the  future. 
On  them  I  rest  my  hopies.  By  means  of  them  and  their 
like,  Life  weaves  her  endless  web. 


405 


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DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 

NOV     71 

KETD     NO'-'4 

1981 

.,  Ainno 

JVJN  1  u  1902  ^ 

REC.  CIR.     MAV 

17  1982 

AUG231986 

^CEIVED 

3TT 

U£C  1  3  198 

; 

C/RCUUTION  Dl 

PT. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  12/80        BERKELEY  CA  94720 


u.  c.  BERKE"?- 


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